Mollie Nisbet

The PhD: nematodes and viruses

My PhD explores the largely underappreciated relationship between nematodes and viruses, using the pig parasite Ascaris suum as my model organism. Despite nematodes being among the most abundant parasites on Earth, remarkably little is known about the viruses that infect them, or about how those viruses might shape the health of the hosts the nematodes themselves infect.

There are four strands to the work:

• characterising the diversity and prevalence of nematode-associated viruses
• investigating whether nematode eggs can act as vectors for viral transmission
• identifying novel antiviral compounds derived from nematodes
• examining how nematode infection alters viral infectivity in co-infected hosts

Together, these objectives aim to reveal how nematodes and viruses interact, with implications for animal health, human health and parasite biology.

The path here

I'm originally from Liverpool, and I went on to study Biological Sciences at the University of Liverpool as an integrated master's.

During my degree I completed a two-month placement in a cancer research lab under Natalia Savelyeva, where I gained hands-on experience in immunohistochemistry and image analysis. I also spent six weeks at Khon Kaen University in Thailand on a Tropical Medicine Research Internship, working on molecular biology techniques such as western blotting and recombinant protein expression, and taking part in field trips on liver fluke research and cholangiocarcinoma prevention.

My master's research project, supervised by Alistair Darby, investigated the diversity of the cidA and cidB genes in Wolbachia pipientis in blood-feeding insects, exploring how this could be leveraged for vector control.