BIOPROTEIN (Walsh Fellowship): assessing the quality and thus nutritional potential of proteins extracted from Irish marine, meat and dairy sources

An opportunity is available to develop a PhD project within the BIOPROTEIN project. The BIOPROTEIN project involves assessing the quality and thus nutritional potential of proteins extracted from Irish marine, meat and dairy sources. The project offers a multidisciplinary approach to evaluate these proteins. The fate of these proteins during gut transit will be analysed using in vitro gastrointestinal digestion models. The bioavailability of the proteins across the intestinal barrier will be measured using co-culture mixed monolayers of Caco2 and HT29-MTX cell lines. Data from these in vitro models will be compared and contrasted to in vivo data. The study will use diverse analytical methods, state of the art GI digestion protocols, tissue culture and pig studies.

This PhD Fellowship starts early in 2018. The project is a joint research project between Massey University (www.massey.ac.nz), New Zealand and Teagasc, Ireland (www.teagasc.ie), with the student enrolled in the Massey University PhD programme under the tutelage of Dr Suzanne Hodgkinson. The student will split their time between two world class research institutes in 3 different locations. In year 1, the student will be based primarily at Massey University, Palmerston North under the supervision of Dr Suzanne Hodgkinson, developing expertise in pig studies. The student will then travel to Teagasc Food Research Centre - Ashtown, Dublin, Ireland to focus on protein characterisation. The final 2 years will be mainly spent in Teagasc Food Research Centre – Moorepark, Cork, Ireland focussed on digestion and bioavailability studies both in vitro and in vivo under the supervision of Dr Linda Giblin and Dr Andre Brodkorb.