Programmable precision guided bacteriophages for selective killing of AMR gut pathogens

Interested individuals must follow Steps 1, 2 and 3 at this link on how to apply
http://www.ed.ac.uk/biology/prospective-students/postgraduate/pgr/how-to-apply

Infectious diarrhea is a major cause of infant mortality and adult morbidity in developing countries with estimated 1 to 2 million deaths per year. The global burden of food-borne diseases is still increasing despite major public health efforts due to poor sanitation and emergence of new strains of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) enteropathogens. While antibiotics and specific naturally isolated bacteriophages may be applied for the cure, they generally lack the specificity and programmability to predictably control the population of many other commensal species in the gut microbiome. In addition, due to increasing AMR to existing antibiotics and natural phages current therapies are at danger to become quickly ineffective and outdated. Here we will engineer bacteriophages to selectively target gut pathogens such as E. coli and Salmonella that cause widespread environmental enteropathy in infants in developing countries. We will program the CRISPR-Cas9 (clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats–CRISPR-associated proteins) nucleases to cut the chromosomes of the target pathogens, and test their ability to block infection in a mouse gut colonization model while leaving the non-pathogenic and often beneficial bacteria largely intact.

The project will provide the student a comprehensive training of advanced molecular genetic tools, innovative synthetic biology technologies, pathological basis of infectious diseases and computational bioinformatics skills. The research will gives the student sufficient training and experience to work in a multi-disciplinary research environment and team, equipped with the ability to initiate and perform innovative frontier research in synthetic biology with application in biomedicine and to prepare well for his/her future research career. The student may also benefit from the opportunity to work collaboratively with some of our healthcare and industrial partners in biomedicine.

Further information about the lab can be found at http://wang.bio.ed.ac.uk/ and informal enquiries may be made to [Email Address Removed].