Nutrient sensing in the African trypanosome

The Faculty of Health and Medicine is pleased to offer a number of competitive scholarships to include fees plus a stipend to the equivalent of RCUK rates for outstanding UK/EU and overseas students wishing to undertake full time doctoral research in any Department within the Faculty of Health and Medicine.

The African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei is an obligate parasite that causes African sleeping sickness in sub-Saharan Africa, a fatal disease of humans and livestock. Like all obligate parasites, trypanosomes must acquire the nutrients that they require to survive and replicate from their hosts, and monitor their host environment to respond and adapt to any alterations. Despite the importance of nutrient sensing for survival and virulence, surprisingly little is known about the underlying mechanisms.

The project will examine nutrient sensing mechanisms in the African trypanosome, initially focusing on how they are able to sense and respond to changes in the uptake of iron from their host. Trypanosomes are able to infect a variety of mammals and must obtain iron in the form of transferrin from their host’s bloodstream in order to replicate. When trypanosomes suffer iron starvation they respond by rapidly up-regulating the expression of their transferrin receptor via a post-transcriptional mechanism. This project will use a combination of biochemical, genetic and quantitative proteomic approaches to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying this up-regulation.

Students wishing to apply for this project should complete the Expression of Interest Form (this can be downloaded from http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/shm/study/doctoral_study/studentships/) and send this directly to the first named supervisor. The closing date for Expressions of Interest is 6 March 2015.