Fadwa Mehdaoui's project focuses on the analysis of interactions between bacteria and their viruses, called phages, in the microbiota using metagenomic data coupled with bioinformatics and machine learning methods.

The metagenomic data come from the North Sentinel project 3.6 (axis Environment-health interactions in the North) that sampled the gut microbiota of young Inuit from Nunavik. Following the identification of bacteria and phages in the sequencing data, her work will consist of an exploratory statistical analysis of the interactions between bacteria and phages, followed by a machine learning analysis based on interpretable algorithms such as the set covering machine or random forests. It is also envisaged to develop a new machine learning model for phage host prediction based on these data.

This project could have important implications for the understanding of the interactions between bacteria and phages, which are very poorly known, but also for the knowledge of the gut microbiota of the Inuit in relation to their unique diet.