Fully Funded 3-year PhD Studentship in Streptomyces Molecular Genetics

There is an urgent need to develop and introduce new antimicrobial natural products to the clinic to combat the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified AMR as one of the greatest threats to global human health and we need novel strategies to discover new drug molecules and enhance production of existing molecules. Many of our clinically used antimicrobial drugs, such as antibiotics, are the product of complex biological factories found naturally in Streptomyces bacteria. These are currently made industrially via fermentation using strains that have been through successive rounds of mutagenesis to improve their production characteristics. To improve how these strains perform and to speed up the process of bringing new antibiotics to market genetic manipulation of the strains is often required.

The laboratory of Professor Paul Hoskisson at the University of Strathclyde is seeking a highly motivated and scientifically curious student to work on a project to investigate the diverse cellular roles and evolution of genes in carbon metabolism in the antibiotic-producing bacterium Streptomyces. The project will involve training in molecular genetics, biochemistry bioinformatics, genome analysis, and bacterial physiology.