Department of Agriculture and Ecology, Faculty of Life Sciences at University of Copenhagen is offering two PhD scholarships commencing 1 May 2011 or soon thereafter. The application deadline is 1 March 2011.
Defences are manifested at two stages:
1) during penetration of the epidermal cell wall when a protective cell wall apposition is formed, and
2) during the subsequent haustorial stage when the attacked epidermal cell can undergo a programmed cell death reaction. To counteract these defences, the fungus secretes hundreds of effector proteins that enter the host cell and interact with defence components.
Project descriptions
Two multidisciplinary PhD projects have been designed in order to obtain detailed understanding of the function of effectors form the barley powdery mildew fungus, from which the genome has been sequenced recently.
- Project 1. Effectors that inhibit defences against penetration. We will screen for these in a relevant fungal cDNA library that will be available for this purpose.
- Project 2. Effectors that inhibit programmed death of the infected cell. These will be searched for in on a one-by-one screening of our collection of YxC effector candidates.
In the searches for the effectors and in the subsequent detailed analysis of them, we will make use of transient transformation of barley single cells to see how over-expression and gene silencing influence the defence responses and how the powdery mildew fungus performs. Protein targets in barley will be searched for by yeast 2-hybrid screening of a barley library, and effector-target protein-protein interactions will be confirmed in pull-down experiments.
Job description
Your key tasks as a PhD fellow at LIFE are:
- Manage and carry through your research project
- Complete PhD courses totalling 30 ECTS points
- Write scientific articles and your PhD thesis
- Participate in international congresses
- Stay at a research institution abroad for a few months
- Teach and disseminate your research
