I finally submitted my thesis last week and finished my Irish soil virome study so I am going to commit to getting this project over the line and hopefully accepted for publishing in the very near future.

This is the result of 4 years of headache, tears and frustration. Goal posts being constantly shifted so far as to extend to building a global taxonomy of the most diverse entity on Earth. I will drink my tea to that.

I definitely understand the mad scientist archetype as I slipped very close to the abyss during my PhD. Even when you’re trying to relax, it’s hard to truly switch your mind off from thinking about the problem you need to solve. Sometimes I’d be doing something as banal as grocery shopping and an idea for how to approach something would pop into my head and I’d have to take note on my phone of something to try. I used to have nightmares where I had to present my work and in the dream I wouldn’t have made any progress and I was stumbling and stuttering. Then I’d wake up in a cold sweat and instead of being able to brush off that it was only a dream - I would get a double whammy of cortisol when I realized my reality matched the dream world. Awful.

Anyway, this phylogenetic phage rave is the result of an OCD, mad scientist who is neurotic about colour palettes, graphic design and metadata. It’s undeniably beautiful.

My supervisor wanted the image in portrait mode also. So anyone reading this on their phone while on the loo can view the taxonomy at their utmost convenience.

And check out the little logo/mascot for PhagePleats. I can’t deal. It’s just so funny and cute. I still need to do a tiny bit of work to get this over the line but I’m hoping it will be accepted for publishing very soon.

Who would have thought that such a trivial and whimsical topic such as bacteriophage taxonomy could evoke such controversy and debate. It’s just our approach, our interpretation. I respectfully invite anyone who has the patience to diligently crunch hundreds of thousands of proteins and tens of thousands of protein clusters into a phylogenetic tree to produce an alternative approach to be my guest <3

Believe it or not - I do have hopes and ambitions outside of viral taxonomy and would like a reprieve from thinking about this. I am still exhausted and unemployed but am pumped to make PhagePleats as epic and user friendly as possible, in addition to write yet another letter of response to the referees covering all possible bases to justify my work. The thought of unleashing this software which will may require maintenance and expansion on par with viral discovery and cataloguing is mildly anxiety inducing but hey - I am just 1 woman on 1 computer. Passionate and patient viral computational biologists take the reins! If someone will pay for me this work I may be more inclined to do it 🤣.

I dedicate these songs to the reviewer who is making me work extremely hard to get this over the line and conveniently refuses to accept or understand my approach. For my first foray into peer review - wow, this is a lot. 🤠