Animals and humans are continuously exposed to organisms and substances that affect our lives. To protect us from these, we have a diverse group of cells called the immune system. How diverse is the immune system in animals? How did it originate in evolution? How does it emerge during animal development? My lab wants to investigate these fundamental questions using marine invertebrate animals, particularly those exhibiting a unique yet widespread mode of development called spiral cleavage (e.g., snails, bivalves, and earthworms).
In this project, you will investigate the complexity and embryonic development of the immune system in segmented annelid worms. You will do this by examining time courses of single-cell transcriptomic data during the development and larval growth of two annelid species, Owenia fusiformis and Capitella teleta. You will ask three key questions: What are the immune cells in annelid worms? What are the genes that characterise these immune cells? How do these cells appear during embryogenesis? Answering these questions will allow you to solve a fundamental biological phenomenon – how organisms form an immune system that defends them against pathogens – at many different levels, from patterns of molecular evolution to gene expression and function.
You will rigorously answer these questions using state-of-the-art experimental and computation approaches.
The Martin-Duran lab (https://www.martinduranlab.com) is a diverse and inclusive research group comprised of eight researchers from all over the world at different career stages. All of us are, however, united by our passion to investigate and discover how animals develop and evolve. We are a multidisciplinary team, with some members working purely on computational approaches and others combining wet and dry lab approaches. We receive support from various funders, including the European Research Commission, the Wellcome Trust and the UK Research Councils. As a PhD student in my lab, you will access a Researcher Development Programme designed to help recognise and develop critical skills and attributes needed to manage research effectively and prepare and plan for the following career stages. We will provide guidance and training in all practical aspects of the project.
Find out more about the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences on our website.
We are looking for candidates to have or expecting to receive a first or upper-second class honours degree and a Master’s degree in an area relevant to the project, such as bioinformatics, developmental and computational biology, and evolutionary biology.
Knowledge of bioinformatics (coding skills, use of command line tools and R) would be highly advantageous but are not required.
You must meet the IELTS requirements for your course and upload evidence before CSC’s application deadline, ideally by 1st March 2025. You are therefore strongly advised to sit an approved English Language test as soon as possible, where your IELTS test must still be valid when you enrol for the programme.
Please find further details on our English Language requirements page.
Formal applications must be submitted through our online form by 29th January 2025 for consideration. Please identify yourself as a ‘CSC Scholar’ in the funding section of the application.
Applicants are required to submit the following documents:
Find out more about our application process on our SBBS website.
Informal enquiries about the project can be sent to Dr Chema Martin AT chema.martin@qmul.ac.uk Admissions-related queries can be sent to sbbs-pgadmissions@qmul.ac.uk
Shortlisted applicants will be invited for a formal interview by the supervisor. If you are successful in your QMUL application, then you will be issued an QMUL Offer Letter, conditional on securing a CSC scholarship along with academic conditions still required to meet our entry requirements.
Once applicants have obtained their QMUL Offer Letter, they should then apply to CSC for the scholarship with the support of the supervisor.
For further information, please go to the QMUL China Scholarship Council webpage.
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