Dr Richard Puxty

Assistant Professor

Email: R.Puxty@warwick.ac.uk

Phone: 024 7615 0373

Lab website

Office: B177

Twitter: @RichardPuxty1

Research Clusters

Environment & Ecology

Microbiology & Infectious Diseases

Quantitative Systems & Engineering Biology

Warwick Centres and GRPs

Habitability GRP

Food GRP

Energy GRP

Vacancies and Opportunities

For PhD and postdoctoral opportunities, and interest in potential collaborations, please contact me at the above email address.

Research Interests

Microbes catalyse the majority of biogeochemical transformations of elements on Earth. They also encompass the vast majority of our planet's genetic potential. My lab focuses on characterising this genetic potential in bacteria. Particularly we are interested in how bacteria acquire the resources they need to grow and to stave off predation by viruses?

Research: Technical Summary

Biography

BSc, Marine Biology with Oceanography, University of Southampton 2009
MSc, Marine Biology, University of Southampton 2010
PhD, University of Warwick, 2014
Research Fellow, Univeristy of California, Irvine, 2014-2016
Research Fellow, Univeristy of Warwick, 2016-2020
Assistant Professor, Univeristy of Warwick, 2020-

Publications

Torcello-Requena, Alberto, Murphy, Andrew R. J., Lidbury, Ian D. E. A., Pitt, Frances Diana, Stark, Richard Jan, Millard, Andrew D., Puxty, Richard J., Chen, Yin and Scanlan, David J. (2024) A distinct, high-affinity, alkaline phosphatase facilitates occupation of P-depleted environments by marine picocyanobacteria. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 121 (20). e2312892121. doi:10.1073/pnas.2312892121 ISSN 0027-8424.

Rihtman, Branko, Torcello-Requena, Alberto, Mikhaylina, Alevtina, Puxty, Richard J., Clokie, Martha R. J., Millard, Andrew D. and Scanlan, David J. (2024) Coordinated transcriptional response to environmental stress by a Synechococcus virus. The ISME Journal . doi:10.1093/ismejo/wrae032 ISSN 1751-7362.

Sands, Elizabeth, Wynne Davies, Siân Elizabeth, Puxty, Richard John, Vergé, Valerie, Bouget, Francois-Yves, Scanlan, David J. and Carré, Isabelle A. (2023) Genetic and physiological responses to light quality in a deep ocean ecotype of Ostreococcus, an ecologically important photosynthetic picoeukaryote. Journal of Experimental Botany, 74 (21). pp. 6773-6789. doi:10.1093/jxb/erad347 ISSN 0022-0957.

Puxty, Richard J. and Millard, Andrew D. (2023) Functional ecology of bacteriophages in the environment. Current Opinion in Microbiology, 71 . 102245. doi:10.1016/j.mib.2022.102245 ISSN 1369-5274.

Liyanagedera, Sahan B. W., Williams, Joshua, Wheatley, Joseph P., Biketova, Alona Yu, Hasan, Muhammad, Sagona, Antonia P., Purdy, Kevin J., Puxty, Richard J., Feher, Tamas and Kulkarni, Vishwesh V. (2022) SpyPhage : a cell-free TXTL platform for rapid engineering of targeted phage therapies. ACS Synthetic Biology, 11 (10). pp. 3330-3342. doi:10.1021/acssynbio.2c00244 ISSN 2161-5063.

Cabello-Yeves, Pedro J., Scanlan, David J., Callieri, Cristiana, Picazo, Antonio, Schallenberg, Lena, Huber, Paula, Roda-Garcia, Juan J., Bartosiewicz, Maciej, Belykh, Olga I., Tikhonova, Irina V., Torcello-Requena, Alberto, De Prado, Paula Martin, Millard, Andrew D., Camacho, Antonio, Rodriguez-Valera, Francisco and Puxty, Richard J. (2022) α-cyanobacteria possessing form IA RuBisCO globally dominate aquatic habitats. The ISME Journal, 16 . pp. 2421-2432. doi:10.1038/s41396-022-01282-z ISSN 1751-7362.

Cabello-Yeves, Pedro J., Callieri, Cristiana, Picazo, Antonio, Schallenberg, Lena, Huber, Paula, Roda-Garcia, Juan J., Bartosiewicz, Maciej, Belykh, Olga I., Tikhonova, Irina V., Torcello-Requena, Alberto, De Prado, Paula Martin, Puxty, Richard J., Millard, Andrew D., Camacho, Antonio, Rodriguez-Valera, Francisco and Scanlan, David J. (2022) Elucidating the picocyanobacteria salinity divide through ecogenomics of new freshwater isolates. BMC Biology, 20 . 175. doi:10.1186/s12915-022-01379-z ISSN 1741-7007.

Rihtman, Branko, Puxty, Richard John, Hapeshi, Alexia, Lee, Yan-Jiun, Zhan, Yuanchao, Michniewski, Slawomir, Waterfield, Nicholas R., Chen, Feng, Weigele, Peter, Millard, Andrew D., Scanlan, David J. and Chen, Yin (2021) A new family of globally distributed lytic roseophages with unusual deoxythymidine to deoxyuridine substitution. Current Biology, 31 (14). 3199-3206.e4. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2021.05.014 ISSN 0960-9822.

Aguilo-Ferretjans, Maria del Mar, Bosch, Rafael, Puxty, Richard J., Latva, Mira, Zadjelovic, Vinko, Chhun, Audam, Sousoni, Despoina, Polin, Marco, Scanlan, David J. and Christie-Oleza, Joseph A. (2021) Pili allow dominant marine cyanobacteria to avoid sinking and evade predation. Nature Communications, 12 (1). 1857. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-22152-w ISSN 2041-1723.

Puxty, Richard John, Evans, David J., Millard, Andrew D. and Scanlan, David J. (2018) Energy limitation of cyanophage development : implications for marine carbon cycling. ISME Journal, 12 . 1273-1286 . doi:10.1038/s41396-017-0043-3 ISSN 1751-7362.

Puxty, Richard J., Millard, Andrew D., Evans, David J. and Scanlan, David J. (2016) Viruses inhibit CO2 fixation in the most abundant phototrophs on earth. Current Biology, 26 (12). pp. 1585-1589. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.04.036 ISSN 0960-9822.

Puxty, Richard John, Perez-Sepulveda, Blanca, Rihtman, Branko, Evans, David J., Millard, Andrew D. and Scanlan, David J. (2015) Spontaneous deletion of an “ORFanage” region facilitates host adaptation in a “photosynthetic” cyanophage. PLoS One, Volume 10 (Number 7). pp. 1-13. Article number e0132642. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132642 ISSN 1932-6203.

Puxty, Richard John, Millard, Andrew D., Evans, David J. and Scanlan, David J. (2014) Shedding new light on viral photosynthesis. Photosynthesis Research, 126 (1). pp. 71-97. doi:10.1007/s11120-014-0057-x ISSN 0166-8595.

Research Projects

Title	Funder	Award start	Award end
Addressing environmental challenges: NERC highlight topics 2022 - Quantifying the impact of anthropogenic nutrient imbalance on C flux from freshwater lakes: cellular mechanisms, community assembly and modelling	NERC	01 Dec 2022	30 Nov 2026
Exploring the genetic 'alphabet' of the Virosphere (The Royal Society Research Grants)	Royal Society	31 Jan 2022	30 Jan 2023
Facile directional immobilization of bacteriophage on to PDMS for rapid and compliant point of care diagnostics (MLS Research Fund Bursary for Sahan Liyanagedera)	Medical and Life Sciences Research Fund	01 Aug 2021	31 Mar 2022

Teaching / Student Supervision

I am happy to receive enquires about PG Research projects in my group, please contact me at the above email address.

I supervise Year 3 Independent Research Projects, URSS and MBio projects. These are usually wet-lab practicals centred around molecular cloning, molecular microbiology and microbial physiology. I also have a range bioinformatics projects for UG students.