Richard M. Alvey
Associate Professor of Biology
Dr. Alvey’s research interests lie in the study of viruses of phototrophic prokaryotes, in particular, the freshwater Cyanobacteria and the Rhodobacteraceae. Recent work has focused on understanding the diversity of the bacteriophages that infect members of these two groups using genomic analyses of wild-caught isolates obtained by Illinois Wesleyan students. Now with our collection of more than 50 isolated and sequenced bacteriophages we are starting to explore how these viruses evolve and adapt to new hosts. Students working on projects in the Alvey lab utilize a variety of traditional microbiology and molecular biology skills as well as bioinformatics to explore these interactions.