Identification and Characterisation of the Phage and Host Receptors in Clostridium difficile, a Prequisite for Future Phage Therapies

Applications are invited to join the University of Nottingham BBSRC iCASE Studentship to undertake an innovative four-year PhD training programme.

Project description

Clostridium difficile is the leading infective cause of hospital-acquired and antibiotic-associated diarrhoea with over 500,000 and 400,000 annual cases of C. difficile infection (CDI) in the US and Europe, respectively. The cost of CDI management is considerable and those antibiotics used to treat infections are compromised by increasing reports of resistant isolates. Alternative therapies are required. One particularly promising strategy is phage therapy. Numerous C. difficile phages have been isolated, but all are temperate. Whilst this rules out conventional phage therapy, such lysogenic phage are ideal for strategies that deliver a lethal cargo, such as a CRISPR/Cas9 array targeted against the host. An impediment to this approach is the narrow host range of C. difficile phages isolated to date. Whilst this could be overcome by rational engineering to broaden phage host range, little is known of the identity of either phage or host cell receptors. Gathering this information is the objective of this PhD.


This project will be based in the BBSRC/EPSRC Synthetic Biology Research Centre (SBRC), School of Life Sciences, and will be supervised by Professor Nigel P Minton.

Applications are invited from students who have/expect to graduate with a first/upper-second UK honours degree, or equivalent qualifications gained outside the UK. Students with an appropriate Masters degree are particularly encouraged to apply.

How to apply

Applicants should go to https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/bbdtp/icase-studentships/icase-studentships.aspx to download the specific application and reference forms.
Applications should include: a fully completed application form; a CV of no more than two A4 pages; a transcript of module marks achieved at the time of submission; and two references. Application forms and CVs should be named in the following format: SURNAME-initial-DTP_BBSRC_iCASE-application.doc (.docx or .pdf) and SURNAME-initial-BBSRC_iCASE-cv.doc (.docx or.pdf) e.g. SMITH-A-BBSRC_iCASE-application.doc

Applications should be sent via email with the subject line ‘BBSRC iCASE Studentship’ to [Email Address Removed] by the deadline: noon, 30th May 2018.

References should be sent directly from the referees to [Email Address Removed] by the deadline: noon, 30th May 2018. Please note it is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that the references are sent in good time for the deadline. Further details are on the reference form.

Enquiries should be sent to: [Email Address Removed]

Please quote ref: BBSRC iCASE