photo of Duhita standing in front of mountain

Duhita Sant, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Education

BSc Microbiology, Pune University, 2011
MSc Microbiology, Pune University, 2013
PhD Evolutionary biology, Monash University, 2022

Bio

Duhita is currently a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Prof. Michael Manhart working on the effect of cross-feeding interactions on mutation effects, especially as mediated by spatial structure, in laboratory systems. She received a PhD in July 2022 from Monash University, studying the evolution of bacteriophages (viral parasites of bacteria) in the context of microbial community diversity and structure, supervised by Prof. Mike McDonald and Prof. Jeremy Barr.

Before joining CABM, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology, University of Oxford with Prof. Tim Barraclough and Prof. Kayla King, examining the impacts of environmental stress (i.e., pH) on coevolutionary interactions within the wild bacterial communities.   

Research Focus

Evolutionary ecology and genomics of microbial populations and communities

2021    Faculty of Science Graduate Research Completion Award, Monash University

2020    Australasian Evolution Society 2020 Student Research Award – Prize (500 AUD) for recognition of a single,            significant research publication in evolutionary biology

2017    Faculty of Science Dean’s International postgraduate research scholarship

2013    MSc awarded with high honors (4th Rank), Pune University

Sant D, Woods L, Barr J, McDonald M. Host diversity slows bacteriophage adaptation by selecting generalists over specialists. Nature ecology & evolution. 2021;5(3):350-359. doi:10.1038/s41559-020-01364-1.
Sant D, Tupe S, Ramana C, Deshpande M. Fungal cell membrane-promising drug target for antifungal therapy. Journal of applied microbiology. 2016;121(6):1498-1510. doi:10.1111/jam.13301.