PhD project

Supervisor: Kevin Foster

Microbial communities contain many evolving and interacting species, which makes them difficult to understand and predict. The Foster lab applies ecological and evolutionary approaches to break down this complexity. Using a combination of theory and experiment, we study how bacteria cooperate and compete in order to succeed in their communities. The lab also studies the ecological networks formed by interacting bacteria, with the goal of predicting and manipulating gut communities for better health. DPhil projects in the lab are on a range of topics and can be purely theory based, purely experimental (wet-lab based) or a combination of both.

Keywords:

• Biomedical Engineering, Ecology & Conservation, Evolution, Microbiology

Publications:

• Wilde J, Slack E, Foster KR 2024 Host control of the microbiome: mechanisms, evolution and disease. Science, 385, eadi3338.
• Spragge F, Bakkeren E, Jahn, MT, Araujo EBN, Pearson CF, Wang X, Pankhurst L, Cunrath O, Foster KR 2023. Microbiome diversity protects against pathogens by nutrient blocking. Science, 382: eadj3502.
• Booth SC, Smith WPJ, Foster KR 2023. The evolution of short and long-range bacterial weapons. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 10.1038/s41559-023-02234-2
• Yang Y, Coyte KZ, Foster KR, Li A 2023. Reactivity of complex communities can be more important than stability. Nature Communications, 14: 7204