DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Predation Behavior of Bacteriovorax and Bacteriophages Against Vibrio spp. - Linking Predatory Traits with Systematics of the Bacterial Predator

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Bacteriovorax are unique predatory bacteria with potential roles and benefits as antibacterial agents to mitigate certain bacterial diseases in plants and animals, controlling bacterial populations and recycling nutrients in the environment. These bacteria may also be an important unexploited source of new novel therapeutic compounds. To realize the full potential of Bacteriovorax, it is necessary to better understand their genome structure and to bring order to the system of classifying and naming them. The purpose of this study is to use whole-genomic sequences to identify the best-performing genes in order to advance the classification and systematics of Bacteriovorax bacteria. The construction of a more accurate phylogenetic tree of Bacteriovorax will provide a framework to define novel isolates in future studies.This information and resulting classification scheme will be disseminated to the scientific community through publications, sequence databases and a website. Florida A&M is a historically black college and university with few applicants submitting DDIG proposals. The student Co-PI will share her experiences in planning and writing the proposal through presentations to inspire others and thus potentially increasing future numbers of proposals from minority students.