Investigating epigenetic mechanisms of stem cell-mediated intestinal repair in health and disease
Supervisors:
Prof Gwo-tzer Ho, School of Infection and Immunity
Dr Srustidhar Das, School of Infection and Immunity
Prof Nigel Balfour Jamieson, School of Cancer Sciences
Summary:
Our gut is crucial for the digestion and absorption of energy, water and nutrients essential for life. This remarkable organ also hosts more than 100 trillion bacteria and is constantly exposed to toxins and noxious stimuli. The gut epithelial lining is renewed daily and is central to the maintenance of gut health in this dynamic environment. This intricate biological process is fundamentally driven by intestinal stem cells (ISCs) that continuously divide into multiple lineages of specialized enterocytes that forms a highly complex immune barrier against the gut luminal environment. This PhD seeks to investigate how intestinal stem cells can form memory via epigenetic imprinting that can influence how they function and regenerate to maintain the gut homeostasis and our overall health. We will seek to understand this using our unique longitudinal human studies in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), an immune-mediated condition that affects more than 10 million people globally. With an excellent supervisory team of clinician-scientists, immunologists, data scientists and bioengineers, we will use patient stem cell derived gut organoids ‘mini-guts on the dish’ combined with cutting edge spatial/single cell technologies and complex in vitro human platforms with our bioengineering/chemistry teams in Glasgow to deliver this novel PhD project that tackles the fundamentals of life, particularly pertinent with the rising incidence of immune-diseases, ageing-related and complex multi-system diseases that are linked to gut health.