Dena Lyras

From digital archive to functional virion: the reconstitution and biological rebooting of bacteriophage PRR1

Over time, numerous legacy bacterial isolates and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) have been systematically lost as physical strain collections have been passed down across academic generations. This ongoing attrition has significantly restricted the ability of contemporary scienti...

Virulence on the move: toxin plasmids drive diversity and disease in Clostridium perfringens

Clostridium perfringens is a Gram-positive anaerobe responsible for a wide spectrum of diseases in humans and animals, driven by an expanding arsenal of toxins. Notably, many of these virulence factors are encoded on mobile genetic elements, particularly conjugative plasmids, pos...