Alexandra Beliavskaia

I am from Russia and received the BSc degree in Biology at St. Petersburg State University specializing in zoology of invertebrates, 2011. I have been awarded a MSc degree with distinction specializing in protistology at the same university, 2013. My research interests focus on symbiosis and its consequences for organisms which are partners in symbiotic systems. The fact that horizontal gene transfer took and takes place between bacterial and eukaryotic organisms is already well known, but mostly by finding alien sequences in the host genomes. The main aim of my master project was to construct the symbiotic system to show events of gene transfer in the experiment.

After graduation, my interests shifted to genomics of symbiotic bacteria: finding genetic background that makes symbiotic bacteria so specific, such as genes involved in infection process, genes making bacteria specific to particular species of the host, etc.

I am SINGEK ESR 14, working on single cell genomic analysis of eukaryotic microbes associated with bloodfeeding arthropods at the University of Liverpool. The objective of this study is to obtain an understanding of the diversity of eukaryotic microbes associated with bloodfeeding arthropods at the genomic level. Comparative genomic analysis of these organisms will be employed to identify shared and unique characters to provide insights into host adaptation.