Postdoctoral position is available in the lab of Dr. David Wang at Washington University in St. Louis. RNA bacteriophages have been largely ignored by the scientific community and little is known about their diversity, their hosts, their impact on the microbiome, how they are sensed or how bacteria defend against them. We discovered a massive expansion of novel RNA bacteriophage in virome studies (e.g. Krishnamurthy et al, PLOS Biology 2016). In addition, we hypothesize that a taxon of viruses commonly found in enteric viromes, the picobirnaviruses, are actually the 3rd known family of RNA bacteriophages (Krishnamurthy et al, Virology 2018) rather than eukaryotic viruses. Our recent studies (Gan and Wang, PNAS 2023) determined that picobirnaviruses encode proteins that can lyse bacteria, an essential step in bacteriophage life cycles. The foci of this position include identification of the bacterial hosts, culturing of novel RNA phages such as Picobirnaviruses, characterization of lysis mechanisms, defining the impact of RNA phage on the microbiome and identifying bacterial defense systems against RNA phage.

 Please send CV, brief statement of interests, and contact information of 3 references  to [email protected].