Katharina Wandera, who completed her PhD in the Beisel Lab at the Helmholtz Institute Würzburg (HIRI), has been awarded a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This prestigious fellowship enables her to spend two years as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Peter Fineran at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
Since November 2024, Wandera has been studying phages—viruses that infect bacteria—and their interactions with their bacterial hosts in the Fineran lab. She is particularly interested in jumbo phages, which have genomes larger than 200 kilobase pairs. During infection, these phages form a protein- and nucleus-like structure. This structure, in which the phage DNA replicates, acts as a shield against bacterial defense mechanisms, making them promising candidates for phage therapy. Wandera's research could therefore form the basis for new antimicrobial agents and therapies.
