Do you want to contribute to a better understanding of pig intestinal microbiome development during early life, and how this affects pig intestinal health and resilience to enteric infections and the need for antibiotics? Do you have experience with microbial ecology, host-microbiome interactions, organoids, immunology or systems biology? Then we are looking for you!
WUR is hiring 5 PhD candidates and one postdoctoral researcher (all 4 years, full-time employment) to become part of PIG-PARADIGM. In this project funded by the
Novo Nordisk Foundation, we aim to decipher interactions of the developing pig, its diet and its intestinal microbiome, as well as the effect of post-weaning stress on intestinal mucosa functioning and susceptibility to infections. We want to turn that knowledge into new strategies for healthier pigs. We will study how members of the intestinal microbiome interact with each other and with the host intestine using advanced organoid-based models, and whether changes in the diet or the environment affect the intestinal microbiome so that less antibiotics are required. You will work in a team that is passionate about the role microbiomes play in the health of humans, animals and our environment.
The following positions are available:
PhD 1: Biogeography of pig intestinal microbiomes
PhD 1 will study the development of microbiomes throughout the intestine of developing pigs. You will establish, how these microbiomes, including bacteria, fungi, archaea and viruses, are linked to health and resilience to diarrhoeal diseases particularly around weaning.
PhD 2: Assembly and resilience of pig intestinal microbiomes
PhD 2 will investigate microbiome assembly rules and interactions between individual strains within the developing pig intestinal microbiome. You will study functional and compositional dynamics of representative natural and synthetic microbiomes grown in batch- as well as continuous reactor systems. The interaction of these microbiomes with the host will be studied in host-microbe models developed by the postdoc.
PhD 3: Microbiome signatures of pig health
PhD 3 will analyse microbiome composition during pre- and post-weaning stages in subsets of piglets, post-hoc selected from a large cohort based on distinct post-weaning health and disease phenotypes. Microbiome signatures will be employed to develop multivariate statistical models to predict health outcomes. These models will be integrated with host-phenotype and genotype data to obtain host-microbe predictive models related to post-weaning diarrhoea risk.
PhD 4: Pig intestinal cell models
PhD 4 will use genetic engineering of intestinal porcine stem cells to programme differentiation into primary intestinal epithelial endocrine cells. These will be used to identify metabolites inducing GLP-2 and other specific paracrine or endocrine hormones regulating epithelial proliferation, blood flow, gut barrier function and digestive processes in the mucosa or via the blood circulation and enteric nervous system. This research will be translated into nutritional interventions to prevent diarrhoea and vulnerability to enteric infections in newly weaned pigs.
PhD 5: FAIR pig intestinal microbiome catalogue
PhD 5 will apply a multitude of computational methods to characterize the taxonomic composition, functional potential and the antimicrobial resistome load of pig intestinal microbiomes. Data will be harmonized so that FAIR microbiome profiles can be generated and integrated in an annotated pig intestinal microbiome catalogue that will be of direct use to PIG-PARADIGM as well as the broader scientific community.