I am a Research Scientist in the Microbes and Food Safety (MFS) ISP. My areas of expertise include general microbiology, molecular microbiology, microbial genomics, metagenomics, and DNA sequencing. Working with John Wain and the core Project Scientists, my role is to support MFS in many different projects, which includes commercial projects, food surveys, and QIB core sequencing.

I started working at the Quadram Institute in 2019 as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist, in the Juge group, investigating mucin-derived sialic acid metabolism in gut bacteria and followed this up with a brief stint in the Narbad group, where I carried out biocide resistance testing of Listeria monocytogenes as part of the LINK project. In addition to these positions, I have also worked as a RT-PCR Scientist for Anglia DNA Services.

Prior to joining the Institute, I completed my PhD in Alan McNally’s group at Nottingham Trent University, where I studied the population structure of Escherichia coli from non-human environments, as well as Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, by combining genomic data with ecology to investigate the evolution of pathogenesis in these model organisms. Prior to my PhD, I achieved an MRes in Infectious Diseases with Distinction from St George’s University of London and a BSc in Biomedical Sciences from Brunel University.

Key Publications

2017 Seecharran T, Kalin-Manttari L, Koskela K, Nikkari S, Dickins B, Corander J, Skurnik M, McNally A. (2017) Phylogeographic Separation and Formation of Sexually Discrete Lineages in a Global Population of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. Microb Genom 2017. doi: 10.1099/mgen.0.000133

2016 McNally A, Oren Y, Kelly D, Pascoe B, Dunn S, Seecharran T, et al. (2016) Combined Analysis of Variation in Core, Accessory and Regulatory Genome Regions Provides a Super-Resolution View into the Evolution of Bacterial Populations. PLoS Genet 12(9). doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006280