Thermal acclimation and adaptation in fungal bio-control agents, BBSRC SWBio, PhD in Biosciences studentship (Funded)

The SWBio DTP is one of the 12 Doctoral Training Partnerships funded by the BBSRC to provide PhD training in areas of their strategic relevance. The SWBio DTP is a consortium comprising the Universities of Bristol (lead), Bath, Cardiff, Exeter, and Rothamsted Research. Together, these institutions present a distinctive cadre of bioscience research staff and students with established international, national and regional networks and widely recognised research excellence. For further details about the programme please see https://www.swbio.ac.uk/

Location: University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE

Metabolism determines the rate of life, and for the majority of organisms this is strongly determined by environmental temperature. Microorganisms can alter their response to temperature in the short term (by physiological acclimation) and in the long-term (by evolutionary adaptation) 1. Importantly for biological control, metabolic rates are strong predictors of competitive outcomes between organisms 2. Biological control agents can provide sustainable alternatives to the control of arthropod and fungal pests. However, poor understanding of the variation in control efficacy can hamper the success of biological methods. Since many fungal biological control organisms suppress target pests via competitive interactions, better understanding of what determines metabolism could lead to improvements in application, production or development of biological control agents. For example, our preliminary work indicates that a short (10 day) physiological acclimation period at different temperatures can impact growth of the biocontrol species Trichoderma harzianum as well as the pathogen Botrytis cinerea.

This PhD project will characterize the extent and importance of acclimation in fungal biocontrol organisms. There are several questions that could be addressed in this project. First, how does physiological acclimation vary among a range of biological control agents used to control arthropod and fungal pests? Second, does this acclimation have consequences for interactions with pests? Critically, if acclimation produces epigenetic changes that are passed through spores then the temperature at which biocontrol agents are grown could have important consequences for field efficacy. Third, does acclimation in the biological control agent follow a similar pattern to acclimation in pests and host plants? Finally, can longer-term adaptation improve the performance of biocontrol agents at temperature extremes?

Training and support from supervisory team. The whole team has broad experience of microbiology and evolutionary biology. BR specializes in applying evolutionary and ecological concepts to biocontrol while GYD is an expert in thermal and metabolic ecology while DH specializes in fungal genomics and haracterizing evolutionary change. The project would suit a keen microbiologist / evolutionary ecologist with an interest in applied issues. The ability to carry out careful experiments is very important for this project, while an interest in quantitative analysis and / or transcriptomics or genomics would be desirable.

For information on the entry requirements please see: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/studying/funding/award/?id=3293