Living in a changing world: genetics of the vulnerability to variability in diet

Global warming has changed the average environment experienced by organisms but has also increased environmental variability. Even if organisms are able to adapt to a sudden change in average environmental conditions, rapidly fluctuating ecological conditions are predicted to impose severe constraints on biodiversity.

Indeed, we have recently found that fluctuating the dietary protein content of flies (Drosophila melanogaster) dramatically increases mortality compared to a lifelong diet of low or high protein. This novel finding indicates severe physiological costs of fluctuations in diet and opens up the first possibility to understand these costs. The powerful genetics readily available in flies now allows a rapid and deep insight into these processes with high relevance to understanding the impact of global warming on biodiversity. In the fly, it is possible to manipulate any gene at any time, in specific tissues, and in many experimental conditions with relatively little effort. These functional genetic experiments together with the short lifespan of flies make it ideally suited for testing mechanisms in the biology of ageing.

Your research will not only have implications for how we understand a key process in evolution and conservation, but also for biomedical science in which ageing research and in particular the connection to diet is growing in importance.

Research environment
My young group (Simons, simons-lab.group.shef.ac.uk) currently consists of two PhD students, a postdoc and two technicians. Our main focus is understanding the connections between diet and ageing, and we use a range of tools for this ranging from meta-analysis to large-scale experiments in flies. We are hosted by the excellent department of Animal and Plant Sciences with a vibrant community of scientists, an active PhD student population and multiple regular seminar series.

Your supervisors
Simons and Sweeney (University of York) share an interest in how diet affects important physiology. The biomedical approach of Sweeney focussing on neuro-degeneration and my evolutionary focus complement each other in supervising this project. The Simons lab has the facilities in place to measure mortality of flies at a large scale and the quantitative framework to analyse such data. Sweeney’s expertise in fly genetics and neurobiology will help identify causal physiology experimentally. For the student, this will generate a stimulating multi-disciplinary environment.

Student profile
We seek a hard-working, passionate student with a quantitative mindset and an interest in the biology of ageing. Candidates with a diverse background in life science will be considered (ranging from ecology to molecular biology and biomedical science). The broad scientific expertise of the supervisors ensures a vibrant environment for the student. We will empower the student to pursue his/her own interests and acquire a wide array of skills (genome-wide association and associated bioinformatics, evolutionary genomics, hands-on experiments on ageing, diet and neurobiology in flies).

Contact
Please feel free to contact me directly should you have any queries about the project and the application process: [Email Address Removed]