PhD Studentship: Developing an axenic media to grow the currently uncultivable Mycobacterium leprae

About:

The BBSRC-funded SWBio DTP involves a partnership of world-renown universities, research institutes and industry, based mainly across the South West and Wales.

This partnership has established international, national and regional scientific networks, and widely recognised research excellence and facilities.

We aim to provide you with outstanding interdisciplinary bioscience research training, underpinned by transformative technologies.

Project Description

Mycobacterium leprae is an obligate intracellular bacterial pathogen that causes leprosy in humans, a devastating infection affecting people mainly in the developing countries. The main problem is the inability to cultivate the bacteria in an axenic media under laboratory conditions that hinders research and development of novel drugs and vaccines. The aim of the project is to develop an axenic growth media to cultivate M. leprae in vitro as cultures. This project will use a combination of wet and dry lab omic-based techniques including metabolomics, metabolic modelling and fluxomics to formulate the axenic media and used it to investigate the fundamental metabolic biology of the leprosy bacillus. The project will lead to an important breakthrough for cultivating viable M. leprae in the lab that will accelerate further research on this important pathogen for discovery of new drugs and vaccines.

Find out more and apply online.