Decreasing costs of sequencing have led to a tsunami of data on public databases. As a result, the known diversity of RNA viruses has exploded over the last ten years but continues to be poorly understood due to viral sequences being analysed superficially. This presents an opportunity to answer questions about the biology and evolution of poorly understood RNA viruses with minimal investment.
Several research directions would be pursued during the project, many of them focused on segmented RNA virus groups whose genomes are consistently insufficiently described due to difficulties in identifying highly diverged segments in metagenomic data as coming from viruses. As such, during the project the candidate would search for previously missed segments in segmented RNA virus groups, assess the assembly quality of previously discovered virus groups (e.g. Chuviridae), and perform comparative genomics of RNA viruses across longer timescales.
The ideal candidate should be enthusiastic about RNA viruses and their evolution and have experience with bioinformatic methods for homology detection, sequence assembly, and phylogenetics although this is not strictly necessary as long as the candidate is excited about learning these methods over the course of the PhD.