University of Maryland, Biology Department - Van Etten Lab · Maryland · fellowship · posted today
PhD in Paulinella biodiversity and evolution of primary endosymbiosis University of Maryland, Biology department: Van Etten lab About the position: The Van Etten lab at the University of Maryland, US (Biology dept) is looking to recruit a full-time, five-year PhD student (funded). You should reach out to juliave@umd.edu juliave@umd.edu with the subject heading “VE lab inquiry - Paulinella” if interested to schedule an exploratory meeting. If asked to apply, you will go directly through the UMD BISI program which has a deadline of December 1. About the project: For this project, the Van Etten lab is seeking applicants with a strong interest in evolutionary biology, fieldwork, lab culturing, protist diversity, and most importantly-working with Paulinella, a non-model organism. More specifically, this would entail fieldwork to collect new populations, lab work to isolate cells and establish long-term cultures, and computational work in the form of downstream multi-omic analyses of both single-cell isolated and cultured organisms. This project will require a lot of time at the microscope doing single cell isolation, advanced imaging, and culture optimization. Although the direction and goals of this project are already established, there will still be plenty of room to develop your own research questions about the ecology and evolution of this important lineage, devise experiments, investigate the origins and mechanisms of primary endosymbiosis, and gain skills in comparative genomics, phylogenetics, and other types of bioinformatics analyses. Prior experience isolating cells <20um, establishing algal cultures, and in microscopy are preferred but not required. We are most interested in finding a motivated student who will put in the time to become proficient in these lab techniques that are challenging with such a small, non-model organism, and to ultimately train others. This PhD project will contribute to the Paulinella Consortium in which our lab and collaborating labs work with hobby naturalists to find and isolate new Paulinella populations across the US. This is a great opportunity to grow your own science communication project/skills and engage the public with your work. Some background: Photosynthetic Paulinella is a clade of rhizarian amoebae that no longer consumes prey and relies on photosynthesis as its main energy source. This is possible because it acquired a photosynthetic organelle, via the process of primary endosymbiosis, from a cyanobacterium. This is how all algae and land plants on earth evolved photosynthesis over a billion years ago, but it’s hard to study exactly how that happened because the event is so ancient. Paulinella is the only other known organism on the planet to evolve a photosynthetic organelle from primary endosymbiosis and because it did so *only* ~100 million years ago, we can study this process in more detail as the Paulinella chromatophore is in an earlier state of establishment than the canonical plastid. This organism has a low abundance in nature although we hypothesize it has a cosmopolitan distribution. It can therefore be difficult to find and isolate, it grows slowly in the lab, and only six species have been described. There are only two nuclear genomes currently available and a handful of organellar genomes. Our goal is to better characterize the biodiversity of this lineage, establish more cultures in the lab, sequence more genomes (+ do comparative genomics), and provide our isolates to other labs who wish to study other aspects of Paulinella cell biology. Julia Van Etten, Ph.D. Assistant Professor University of Maryland, College Park Website: vanettenlab.org Request a 30-min meeting
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