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We are looking for an enthusiastic molecular biologist, interested in plants and plant diseases who would like to perform cutting-edge fundamental research on downy mildews, an agriculturally important group of pathogens. Downy mildews are obligate biotrophic oomycetes that cause severe foliage blights on many crops including the targeted vegetable crop here, spinach. Downy mildews adapt at a stunning pace and rapidly break new resistance traits requiring new strategies for resistance breeding. For this, pathogen informed approaches are highly demanded. Understanding the tools, weapons, and strategies that pathogens use for infection provides a strong basis for developing/selecting resistance mechanisms that effectively protect the plant. Identifying all effectors – the tools used by the pathogens to support host infection – and unravelling their activities gives a clear profile of the pathogen. We aim to develop this innovation for the spinach downy mildew Peronospora effusa by using state-of-the-art genome analyses methods, bioinformatics, and functional assays. This is where you come in. You will work at the intersection of bioinformatical identification and functional characterization of pathogen effectors, and accordingly you will contribute to the development of a functional genomics platform to assess effector contribution to pathogen virulence and disease.
Your PhD research will be conducted in the Plant-Microbe Interactions group of Dr Ronnie de Jonge and Prof Guido van den Ackerveken and in close collaboration with the Theoretical Biology & Bioinformatics group of Dr Michael Seidl at Utrecht University. Your PhD project will be part of the Topsector AF&TU project “Understanding the evolution of downy mildew virulence for knowledge-driven resistance breeding of spinach”, lead by Prof van den Ackerveken and supported by four vegetable breeding companies. In this project, you will work closely together with a bioinformatics PhD student. A selection of ongoing research lines across the groups includes broadly host-microbe interactions studying pathogens and plants, microbial genomics, fungal genome evolution, genome organization, microbiome analyses, experimental evolution, and cell-type specific gene expression profiling.
Recent key publications:
We are looking for a highly motivated and creative PhD candidate with
In addition to the employment conditions laid down in the cao for Dutch Universities, Utrecht University has a number of its own arrangements. For example, there are agreements on professional development, leave arrangements and sports. We also give you the opportunity to expand your terms of employment yourself via the Employment Conditions Selection Model. In this way we like to encourage you to continue to grow.
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