Associate ProfessorTanya Golubchik

The aim of Dr Golubchik's research is to use modern genomics technologies to explore the diversity and evolution of microbial pathogens, especially viruses and bacteria of public health significance. She is interested in how microbial pathogens evolve within an individual infection to generate a within-host microcosm of closely related bacteria/viruses, some of which can then be transmitted onward to a new host. Each element of this process involves a complex interplay between competing pathogens or variants in the original host, immune pressure from both the infector and the newly infected individual, and a stochastic element of 'drift', or luck in making it through the bottleneck of transmission and into a new host.

She has a particular interest in using novel targeted metagenomics methods to sequence pathogen genomes directly from clinical samples, to gain insights into underlying genetic diversity: for example, learning how SARS-CoV-2 variants arise and are transmitted. With the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) COVID-19 Infection Survey, she is exploring COVID-19 transmission patterns and viral evolution both on the scale of individual transmission events within households, and more broadly on the population level.