There are exceptional opportunities to better understand and manipulate microbial community dynamics in engineered and natural environments to generate water or air of improved quality. We are investigating the interactions of viral and fungal populations in residential home settings, including air, water, and surfaces present in the built environment. We are particularly interested in using mycoviruses, or viruses that infect fungi, as biocontrols for limiting unwanted fungal growth and fungal byproducts (e.g., mVOCs) in these spaces. Ongoing research is centered on isolating environmental fungal strains from indoor environments for mycovirus discovery using long-read sequencing technologies, and future work will focus on establishing the impacts of virus infection on fungal virulence, growth, and metabolite production. Findings from this research will establish fungus-containing mycovirus populations that can be applied to alter the microbial community in engineered systems.
This work is supported through the NSF Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr) ERC.