Cellular energy variability in disease pathways and drug treatments

The explosion of "big data" and "omics" studies in biomedical science has revealed the structure of biological pathways associated with diseases and drug treatments in unprecedented detail. However, we still lack insight into how these pathways behave in the face of cell-to-cell variability – challenging the translation of this structural knowledge into therapeutic insight. The steps in these pathways often require a source of energy, and take place in the chaotic and noisy environment that is the biological cell. Descriptions of gene regulation and enzymatic pathways often omit these important dependences and so are only of limited use in predictive biomedical modelling, particularly in personalised medicine where biological heterogeneity is a central focus. Fundamentally, we need models that tie these exciting “big data” results to the real biophysical world, so that they can inform real therapeutic strategies.

This project will break ground in addressing this absence. The student will investigate the effects of energy dependence and cellular noise on the dynamics of biomedically important pathways, initially focussing on chemotherapy and antibiotic resistance. They will develop cutting-edge and highly transferrable skills in the quantitative modelling of complex biological systems, bioinformatics, and data science and statistics. They will benefit from a rich and interdisciplinary research environment (UoB Biosciences is ranked 3rd in the UK (Guardian 2017), and will be supported by two supervisors with extensive experience making medical progress through quantitative methods.

DeadlineSunday 28th May 2017.

By this date you should have checked you eligibility, applied on-line and completed the IMPACT proforma at http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/mds-graduate-school/scholarships/mrc-impact/apply.aspx

For further Details please contact [Email Address Removed]

Stipend: RCUK standard rate plus travel allowance and a laptop.