We are looking for a motivated candidate for a fully funded PhD program in cooperation between the University of Bordeaux (France) and Tel-Aviv University (Israel). This program will be jointly supervised by D. Dupuy and O. Rechavi.
The selected candidate will spend the first 18 months in Bordeaux and following 30 months in Tel-Aviv. At the end of this program the PhD diploma will be awarded jointly by both universities.
Genetic control of alternative splicing in response to environmental stress in C. elegans.
In adverse environmental conditions C. elegans can adapt its metabolism in various ways to resist to stress. The cellular responses can induce drastic developmental modifications associated with a life expectancy far beyond that of unstressed animals.
We are interested in characterising in detail the molecular pathways involved in the selection of the stress response mechanism and in particular elucidating the mechanisms by which stress response genetic programs can affect the physiology of the animals well after the removal of the environmental stress. Recent work performed in the Rechavi lab indicates that the metabolic changes in stressed individuals that grants them extended lifespan can be transmitted to their progeny for at least two generations. This transmission of a modified gene expression pattern is associated with the inheritance of small RNA molecules (Rechavi et al., Cell, 2011; Rechavi et al., Cell, 2014).
The Dupuy lab is investigating alternative splicing events associated with stress response (Marza et al., EMBO Reports, 2015; Cornes et al., RNA, 2015) and the molecular mechanisms regulating splicing (Amrane et al., Nature Communications, 2014) Interestingly it has been shown recently that the small RNA processing pathway largely overlap the splicing machinery (Tabach et al., Nature 2013). The purpose of this PhD program will be to further characterise the functional relationship between the expression of stress specific messenger isoforms and heritable smallRNAs. We will aim in particular at identifying stress activated component of the RNA processing machinery that are responsible for the switching to stress specific messenger isoforms and investigate wether they directly affect the regulation of small RNAs.
Interested candidates should send CV and motivation letter to Oded Rechavi odedrechavi@gmail.com and Denis Dupuy d.dupuy@iecb.u-bordeaux.fr