Doktorand

Doktorander
med placering vid Sahlgrenska akademin

Sista ansökningsdag: 2010-02-05

Sahlgrenska akademin utlyser doktorandplatser med placering vid institutionen för biomedicin, institutionen för medicin och institutionen för odontologi.

Institute of Biomedicine

Proteomic and mass spectrometry studies of the mucus protecting the colon in ulcerative colitis

Application deadline: 2010-02-05

Description of the research project
The large intestine is difficult to protect as it harbors an enormous amount of bacteria.How this can take place was not understood until we recently could show that the inner of the two mucus layers of colon are devoid of bacteria.These mucus layers are built around the large MUC2 mucin, a protein that is assembled into enormous net-like polymers.These net-like polymers are secreted by the goblet cells together with a number of other components that we have discovered by proteomics.Several of these are likely to be important for building a stable inner mucus layer that is attached to the epithelia.The inner mucus layer is renewed in an hour and converted to an outer layer that is expanded in volume four times by undiscovered proteolytic cleavages in MUC2.Defects in the inner mucus layer are expected to cause inflammation, bloody diarrhea and colon cancer just as in ulcerative colitis.To understand this disease we need to understand alterations in the components of the mucus layer and most importantly proteolytic processing of these proteins and MUC2, by both endogenous and bacterial enzymes, in health and disease.This requires the development of sensitive methods for the determination cleavage sites using our mass spectrometry setup, including an Orbitrap, for the elucidation of these questions.The student is expected to develop into a front end of masspectrometrist and expert in the interpretation of generated data by bioinformatics.


Doktorandplatserna avser två års utbildningsbidrag och två års doktorandanställning och beräknas leda fram till doktorsexamen.

För mer information och ansökningsblankett se:

http://www.sahlgrenska.gu.se/doktorandportalen/Doktor_Fran_start_till_mal/doktorandplatser/