Today we interview Evelien Adriaenssens, researcher and group leader at the Quadram Institute.

We speak about the minimum bioinformatic skillset that a phage researcher should have and what tools you can use to get there. Stay till the end of the episode to hear some of the work she is doing on Gut Viromics and the challenges this work entails. At the very end we ask some personal questions and career advice,

Enjoy!

Episode chapters:

What is the minimum bioinformatic skillset for a phage researcher?

How to decide between short read vs long read sequencing to sequence your phage?

What are the tools to assemble and annotate your phage without command lines?

Why you should learn to use open source software early in your career.

The reason behind the abolishment of the morphology taxonomic classification.

How do I know what is my phage taxonomy?

Submitting your genome to GenBank.

Are all phage genomes linear?

How do I choose where my phage genome starts?

What is the gut virome?

What is a healthy virome?

Does it play a role in the immunity of babies?

Phages as probiotics.

What are the major challenges when analyzing viromes?

How do you know if your phage genomes are integrated in bacteria or if they are free phages?

How did you get introduced in the phage world?

What’s your favorite failure?

What’s your advice for PhD students?

What do you like the most in your job today?

What are you most excited for the future of the phage field?