About the Project
This project is one of a number that are in competition for funding from the NERC Great Western Four+ Doctoral Training Partnership (GW4+ DTP) for entry in October 2021.
The GW4+ DTP consists of the Great Western Four alliance of the Universities of Bath, Bristol and Exeter and Cardiff University plus five prestigious Research Organisation partners: British Antarctic Survey, British Geological Survey, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the Natural History Museum and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. The partnership aims to provide a broad multi-disciplinary training, designed to produce tomorrow’s leaders in earth and environmental science.
SUPERVISORY TEAM:
Lead supervisor: Prof Jason Wolf, University of Bath, Milner Centre for Evolution https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/jason-wolf
Co-supervisors: Dr Alex Hayward (Exeter), Prof Sam Sheppard (Bath) and Prof Christopher Thompson (UCL)
OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH:
Project Background
The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum (‘Dicty’) typically lives as single celled individuals in the soil, where they exploit a wide range of bacterial prey. However, when food becomes scarce, they aggregate to form a multicellular slug that migrates and forms a fruiting body composed of a dead stalk that holds aloft a sorus of spores. This process of aggregation and developmental differentiation represents a social stage where cells cooperate to form a functioning fruiting body, while also competing for space in the sporehead. Dicty has been used as an ecological model to study predation and as an evolutionary model to study sociality. To understand how natural selection arising from these fundamental components of Dicty life history have shaped the associated genes, we have been sequencing the genomes of large numbers of Dicty strains collected from natural populations. In this project, we are interested in using these data to characterise the pangenome in this species (which contains the full set of all genes present in nature) and to use that information to understand how natural selection (arising from traits like predation and social cooperation) has shaped the presence and absence of different genes across strains and populations.
Project Aims and Methods
The project aims are hierarchical and flexible, proving many opportunities for student led avenues of inquiry. The goal is to first characterise patterns of gene gain and loss (including the role of transposable elements as disruptors of gene function and facilitators of evolutionary change) across lineages sampled from natural populations. We will give a special focus to the degree to which social and non-social genes differ in their evolutionary properties. For this we will utilise existing sequences, but will complement our existing data sets by acquiring new genome sequence data as needed. This aspect is especially flexible and can allow students to pursue their own directions as the project progresses. We will also apply a number of fine-scale tools that can dissect the independent evolutionary histories of different genes and genome regions to understand the mosaic nature of evolutionary and ecological processes shaping the genome. Finally, we will relate these evolutionary changes to our understanding of gene function, with the potential to validate predictions using large panels of gene knockout strains.
CANDIDATE REQUIREMENTS:
Applicants for a studentship must have obtained, or be about to obtain, a First or Upper Second Class UK Honours degree (or equivalent) in an area appropriate to the skills requirements of the project.
This project will apply modern and cutting-edge approaches from population genetics and bioinformatics. Therefore, some familiarity with computer programming, bioinformatics and statistics will be beneficial; however, the student will be provided with appropriate training as needed and therefore existing knowledge and skills in these areas are not essential.
APPLICATIONS:
Project enquiries: Prof Jason Wolf, [Email Address Removed].
Application enquiries: [Email Address Removed].
Candidates should apply formally using the University of Bath online application form:
https://samis.bath.ac.uk/urd/sits.urd/run/siw_ipp_lgn.login?process=siw_ipp_app&code1=RDUBB-FP02&code2=0015
When completing the form, please state in the ‘Finance’ section that you wish to be considered for NERC GW4+ DTP funding and quote the project title and lead supervisor’s name in the ‘Your research interests’ section. If you wish, you may apply for more than one project within the same application but you should submit a separate personal statement for each one.
If you have settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, please upload documentary evidence with your application.
More information on how to apply may be found here:
https://www.bath.ac.uk/guides/how-to-apply-for-doctoral-study/
Funding Notes
Studentships cover tuition fees at the ‘Home’ level, research/training costs and a stipend (£15,285 p.a., 2020/21 rate) for 3.5 years.
Candidates normally eligible for 'Home' fees are:
UK nationals*
Irish nationals living in the UK/Ireland
Applicants with settled or pre-settled* status in the UK under the EU Settlement Scheme
Applicants with indefinite leave to enter/remain in the UK
* must have lived in the UK/EEA/Switzerland continuously since September 2018.
International applicants, not eligible for ‘Home’ fees, may apply and will be considered for a limited number of fee discounts equivalent to the difference between the ‘Home' and ‘Overseas’ tuition fees.
References
Lima de Oliveira et al. 2019. Conditional expression explains molecular evolution of social genes in a microbe. Nature Communications, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11237-2
Gruenheit et al. 2017. A polychromatic ‘greenbeard’ locus determines patterns of cooperation in a social amoeba. Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14171
Wolf et al. 2015. Fitness Trade-offs Result in the Illusion of Social Success. Current Biology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.02.061