Dr S Shoaie, Dr D Moyes
No more applications being accepted
Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
Environmental factors such as diet, antibiotics and lifestyle can change the composition of microbiome. Using high-throughput (HT) data, specific bacteria in the gut and oral cavities have been associated to human health and disease. Fresh insights into the HT data and systems medicine derived from the human microbiome are fundamentally reshaping the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of metabolic disorders (Type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer, Obesity cardiovascular disease and etc.). This creates new possibilities for patients and physicians that are not served by current cutting edge technologies.
Due to the complexity of metabolic disorders and interpretation of HT data, novel mathematical models are critical for deciphering the role of individual elements and the entire system. As such, disorders that are driven or accompanied by metabolic reprogramming may be studied at the systems-level in an unprecedented fashion. Indeed, the complexity of metabolism can be captured by the reconstruction of Genome-scale Metabolic models (GEMs). GEMs are integrative platforms for exploring genotype-phenotype relationships and metabolic differences between clinical conditions.
This studentship will develop GEMs for host and the key bacterial species and utilizing these models for analysis of diseased and healthy cell types to identify microbiome specific metabolic features that constitute potential drug targets.
Person specification:
- Candidates must possess, or be expected to achieve a first or high upper second class degree, or master’s degree in a relevant subject (bioinformatics / data science / computational biology / computer science / applied mathematics or related disciplines).
- Candidates must also have experience in one of the following software R / MATLAB / PERL / PYTHON or related.
Please note: Applicants must include the project ID number in the ’Research proposal’ and ’Funding (point 5)’ sections of their application.
Funding Notes
Funded by King's College London Dental Institute for 4 years, Home/EU students. Start date October 2017.