PhD scholarship in fungal genomics and predictive modelling - DTU Food

Fungi are increasingly causing health issues globally. Such infections are not only increasing in humans and animals, but also in crops and as contamination of food products with mycotoxins. We have recently been awarded funding to develop online webservices for genomic characterization of all pathogens capable of infecting animals, humans and plants, which includes fungi.

However, genomics methods and workflows have so far not gained enough attention in relation to plant infecting or mycotoxin producing fungi. Databases of genomes of known fungal species have already been developed, as has gene databases of mycotoxin producing gene clusters, but an extensive linkage to fungal taxa is poorly described.

Furthermore, it is known that a number of fungi including some used in food production have the gene cluster for mycotoxin production but do not express them. There is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the genomics of fungi, as well as to translate this into online services.

Thus, as part of our GPAP project (www.gpap.global) and our responsibilities as advise provider to the Danish Food Administration we are seeking a PhD-candidate in fungal genomics with a focus on correlating genomes to phenotypes and developing webservices1 …