Interactions among viruses can help them succeed inside their hosts or impart vulnerabilities that make them easier to treat. Scientists are learning the ways viruses mingle inside the cells they infect, as well as the consequences of their socializing.

Ph.D. student Alexander J. Robertson in the Molecular & Cellular Biology program at the University of Washington is among those scientists.

“I study the evolution of antimicrobial resistance through mechanisms which require interaction between microbes,” he explained.