Katharine Coyte

Dr Katharine Coyte is a Research Fellow in the Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics at The University of Manchester. Her research focuses on developing novel experimental and theoretical methods to study microbial community ecology and evolution, particularly within gut microbiomes. She investigates how environmental complexity influences microbial interactions and evolutionary trajectories. Dr Coyte contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals through her work on microbial systems relevant to health and environmental sustainability.

Her expertise spans microbial ecology, evolutionary biology, and systems biology. Key collaborations include work on the Oxford Nanopore PromethION project (2023-2026), where she explores genomic technologies in microbial research. She has published extensively on topics such as type VI secretion systems, phage dynamics, microbiome stability, and horizontal gene transfer mechanisms.

Dr Coyte's research highlights include uncovering how toxin multiplicity limits bacterial resistance evolution (2025), demonstrating reactivity's critical role in ecosystem stability (2023), and revealing ecological drivers of early-life microbiome assembly (2020). Her work bridges fundamental science with translational applications in healthcare and environmental management.