Wednesday, August 13, 2014

The Natural History Museum, London (UK; Diana Percy) is offering a fully-funded 3 year PhD studentship

The Natural History Museum, London (UK; Diana Percy) is offering
a fully-funded 3 year PhD studentship jointly supervised with the
University of Southampton (UK; Mark Chapman), and the University of
British Columbia (Canada; Quentin Cronk), starting on 1 November 2014
(or as soon as possible thereafter).

Deadline for applications: 19 September 2014
The studentship is only open to those who qualify for 'Home' tuition
fees (generally UK/EU residence).

We are looking to recruit a student interested in studying the evolution
and genomics of a Hawaiian plant gall radiation.

Despite the economic importance of galling (many plant pests are
gallers) very little is known about the molecular developmental
processes underlying galling. This project will use the recently
proposed and innovative approach of "evolutionary developmental
transcriptomics". Further, the project will use a novel application of
"dual-RNAseq" to co-generate plant and insect transcriptomes under
gall interaction.

The project is in two parts: (i) the ecological and developmental
characterization of gall biology in a insect-plant island radiation. This
will involve fieldwork in the Hawaiian Islands. (ii) Genomic approaches
to identify the genes, regulatory networks, and expression patterns
involved in shifts to different gall phenotypes among closely related
insect species. The project will use whole genome sequencing and de novo
assembly of the plant and insect genomes (guided by reference genomes
of Eucalyptus and Diaphorina/Trioza), together with leaf (infected
and uninfected) and nymph transcriptomics to identify candidate
genes associated with the perturbation of plant tissue during gall
formation. Bioinformatics will include construction of gene coexpression
networks to predict plant and insect gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and
gene network modules (GNMs) using galled and ungalled leaves. Our approach
will draw on recent developmental work on leaf shape using the generation
of self-organizing maps (SOMs) and gene coexpression network analysis
to describe GNM rewiring between evolutionary-developmental states.

The PhD student will gain knowledge across a broad range of areas
from fieldwork, lab work, systematics, genomics and evolution
of development. Training will be in plant and insect genomics and
development, candidate gene identification and Bayesian modelling methods,
RNA and DNA collection and extraction, next generation sequencing
methods, genomic assemblies and bioinformatics methods, and insect and
plant biology.

For further details contact Dr Diana Percy (d.percy@nhm.ac.uk)

Interested parties will need to provide:
- Curriculum vitae.
- Covering letter outlining your interest in the particular PhD
  project, relevant skills training, experience and qualifications for
  research, and a statement of how this PhD project fits your career
  development plans.
- Transcripts of undergraduate and Masters' degree results.
- Names and email addresses of two academic references including (if
  applicable) Masters' project supervisor.

"Percy, Diana" 

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