Dr Alistair Darby’s research interests are in the area of host-associated microbes and their relationship with their arthopod hosts.  He is an expert in genomic and transcriptomic approaches to microbe-host interaction, with over 60 publications. Work relevant to this PhD programme are the first ‘in vivo’ analysis of Wolbachia gene expression (ISME J, 2014 8: 925-937) and the use of single cell genomics to study termite symbiosis (PNAS, 2015 112:10224-10230). He has extensive experience in the design and analysis of genomic and RNA-seq projects using the PacBio and Illumina platforms. Alistair is a Director of Centre Genomic Research with responsibility for overseeing the single cell genomics facility.