I am Madhav Madurantakam Royam, a first year Ph.D. student at Puxty’s Lab at the School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, UK. My Ph.D. work focuses on elucidating the role of tRNA’s in mycobacteriophages with respect to its virulence and host range. My work involves evolution of mycobacteriophages against their hosts and generating tRNA mutants in them. I have finished my Master of Science (MSc) and Master of Technology [By Research] degrees from Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India. I have had experiences on working with Gram-negative pathogens such as Citrobacter sp. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella sp, and Escherichiacoli. During my Master of Technology [By Research] degree, I have isolated lytic bacteriophages against Citrobacter sp. and characterized their in vitro & in vivo efficacy in a zebrafish model.
My research interests are to understand the evolution of phages against their hosts and characterise their defence mechanism them using various molecular biology and bioinformatic tools.