Applications are invited for a full-time scholarship available in the School of Pharmacy & Biomedical Sciences. The scholarship is tenable for up to 3 years for a PhD (via MPhil route) [subject to satisfactory progress] and is open to international applicants only. UK/EU applicants are not eligible to apply. The scholarship will provide £15000 towards the cost of the International tuition fee over 3 years. A wide range of human diseases (e.g. cancer, diabetes, atherosclerosis) are accompanied by enhanced intracellular lipid droplet formation. In recent years, sterol regulatory element binding proteins (SREBPs) have been shown to regulate the expression of key lipid synthesis genes including those encoding fatty acid synthase, acetyl-CoA carboxylase and ?9 desaturase. It is proposed that SREBPs function as allostatic nodes which contribute to cellular lipid quality control processes. Consequently, their activity is closely controlled through a variety of upstream (mTOR/Akt pathways) and downstream (metabolic products e.g. saturated fatty acids, cholesterol) effectors. The project will utilise a number of species of yeast, including Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Saccharomyces cerevisie and Lipomyces starykei, to determine the underlying transcriptional control of acyl lipid metabolism and lipid droplet formation. Using a variety of stimuli, we will investigate which transcription factors are involved in the promotion of acyl lipid metabolism and desaturation. This will involve the use of a number of molecular biology techniques including Northern blot and microarray analysis, to identify important regulatory proteins, and chromatin immunoprecipitation (CHiP), to determine regulatory elements within target genes. Furthermore, the genetic manipulation of yeast is relatively facile providing the opportunity to decipher the functional components of these regulatory pathways and identify future drug targets.

Scholarship Application Deadline: 13 May 2011

Further Scholarship Information and Application