Alice studies the arms race between bacteria and their parasites, with a specific focus on the evolution and ecology of bacterial immune systems and phage counter-defences. During her PhD she discovered and characterised the MADS immune system and investigated its interaction with the Type IE CRISPR-Cas of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Previously, her Master research project encompassed phage isolation and characterization for therapy purposes against Vibrio cholerae, under the supervison of Paul Turner and Jean-Paul Pirnay. Alice also worked on an sLoLa project in collaboration with the Westra lab. Alice is now doing a Postdoc at the Institut Pasteur in France.
Benoit Pons – Post-doctoral Researcher
I completed a PhD in biochemistry in Toulouse (France), where I deciphered the mode of action of a bacterial genotoxin. I joined the van Houte lab in 2020 to work on phage-bacteria relationships, with a focus on bacterial defence systems and phage anti-defence systems. My main project aimed at measuring the evolutionary costs and benefits of several anti-phage strategies at a single-cell level, to understand the forces driving phage-bacteria coevolution. This project relies on a cutting-edge microfluidics approach in collaboration with Ass. Prof. Stefano Pagliara (LSI, University of Exeter). In a second project, I worked on the influence of environmental conditions on defence/anti-defence relationships, by studying how antibiotics can disturb interactions between bacterial CRISPR-Cas system and phage anti-CRISPR proteins. Finally, I was involved in a collaborative project aiming to characterise the mechanism of a newly discovered bacterial defence system.
After 4.5 years in the van Houte lab, I secured a lectureship at the University of Toulouse (France). I am now part of the ‘Microbial Ecology and Evolution’ group in the Centre for Integrative Biology (CBI Toulouse), where I conduct my research on how phage-phage interactions and lysis/lysogeny regulation can shape the evolution of bacteria. You can also find me on Twitter, OrcID, or on the ‘Microbial Ecology and Evolution’ group webpage.
2023
Anna Olina – Post-doctoral Fellow
During my PhD in the van Houte lab I studied prokaryotic Argonaute proteins focusing on their biochemical characteristics and in vivo functions. I am now looking at the interplay between different bacterial defence systems using Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a model system as part of the Westra lab. This project aims to understand how multiple defence systems in one cell interact to protect the host against mobile genetic elements.
Jahn (Jay)Ringger – Research Assistant / Lister Summer Studentship
Jay carried out an MSci research project (2022-2023) in our group, in which he worked on the role of plasmid-encoded CRISPR-Cas9 in the outcomes of plasmid-plasmid competition. Jay is interested in the evolutionary ecology of pathogens, and in the van Houte lab studied the ecology of using CRISPR biotechnology to remove antibiotic resistance genes under the supervision of Dr. David Walker-Sünderhauf. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the laboratory of Prof. Dieter Ebert at the University of Basel.
Samantha Webster – Visiting PhD researcher
2022
Ellie Pursey – PhD researcher, co-supervised
Ellie carried out her PhD in our team (2018-2022), in which she performed large-scale bioinformatics analyses to understand the importance of CRISPR-Cas systems as barriers to horizontal gene transfer. Ellie’s project focused on the removal of antimicrobial resistance genes from bacterial communities found in the human gut, using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. For this, she focused on clinically relevant vancomycin-resistant enterococci, as well as multidrug resistant Enterobacteriaceae. She was supervised by Stineke van Houte, Edze Westra and Will Gaze (University of Exeter Medical School). You can read her work here. Ellie is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Prof. Gemma Atkinson (University of Lund, Sweden), funded by a Wenner-Gren Foundation fellowship.
Matthew Chisnall – Technician
Matt worked as a part-time technician (2020-2022), where he was involved in lab organisational and management. He also worked as part of various projects that involved molecular cloning, phage DNA isolations and protein purification.
Zuzanna Szczutkowska – Work placement
Zuzanna carried out a work placement and her undergraduate project in our lab, working on the characterization of a panel of lytic phages that infect the pathogen E. coli ST131. She is currently undertaking a MbyRes project in the lab of Prof. Barbara Tschirren here at the Cornwall campus.
2021
Jessica Forsyth – MbyRes student
In collaboration with the Raymond lab, Jessica sampled a range of different environments in Cornwall to isolate bacteriophages that infect the E. coli pathogen ST131. This pathogen is a common cause of bloodstream infections worldwide and has become increasingly resistant to antimicrobial drug treatment. As part of her MbyRes degree (2019-2021), Jessica has shown that combining ST131-specific phage with a bacterial competitor species is a powerful strategy to reduce E. coli ST131 densities. You can read her work here.
2018
Dan Morley – MbyRes student
Dan did an MbyRes project (2016-2017) on understanding co-evolutionary dynamics between the dairy bacterium Streptococcus thermophilus and its lytic phage 2972. You can read his work here.
Environment and Sustainability Institute, Penryn Campus, University of Exeter, Penryn TR10 9FE, UK
Contacts:
Stineke van Houte, Principal Investigator: C.van-Houte@exeter.ac.uk
