Tracing viruses through the water column, from open ocean to vent fluid.
Three questions run through my current work: how do marine giant viruses transport through the water column, how far do they travel from deep-sea vents to the pelagic ocean, and what is their biogeochemical significance?
Giant viruses on the move
Using paired planktonic and particle-associated metagenomes, I track how nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses ("giant viruses") are transported vertically through the water column in line with a conceptual viral shuttle model, and how their auxiliary metabolic genes help shape their depth distribution across the open-ocean water column.
Vent virus biogeography
A large-scale metagenomic survey of giant viruses across globally distributed hydrothermal vents and the surrounding pelagic ocean, testing whether vent-derived viral populations follow an "everything is everywhere" distribution.
Viruses infecting chemoautotrophs
Collaborative work using quantitative stable isotope probing to identify which viruses are actively infecting chemoautotrophic hosts — the microbes that turn dissolved inorganic carbon into biomass at the base of vent and deep-sea food webs.
MSc Thesis: Metagenomic diversity of dsDNA bacteriophages in the North Sea
Performed at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), Belgium. I analyzed seven metagenomic samples collected across the North Sea to characterize the diversity and predicted hosts of dsDNA bacteriophages, laying the methodological groundwork for my later viral ecology work.
