Regulating nitrogen sense and sensibility: de novo non-coding RNAs in bacterial nitrogen metabolism and stress adaptation
Supervisors:
Arianne Babina, School of Infection and Immunity, University of Glasgow
Rachel Wheatley, School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast
Dónal (Daniel) Wall, School of Infection and Immunity, University of Glasgow
Summary:
Nitrogen is fundamental to life, and bacteria have evolved complex regulatory systems to sense and respond to its availability. This PhD project will investigate newly identified de novo noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) that strongly upregulate glnK, a gene encoding a key nitrogen regulatory protein in Escherichia coli. These ncRNAs were identified from plasmid libraries containing randomly generated DNA sequences, revealing their potential as novel regulators of nitrogen metabolism and stress adaptation.
The research will determine how these ncRNAs control gene expression, influence bacterial physiology under nitrogen limitation, antibiotic exposure, and persistence states, and whether they function in other Gram-negative bacteria, including nitrogen-fixing species and important pathogens. The findings will advance understanding ofhow new gene regulatory networks emerge and evolve, and may inform the engineering of microbes with enhanced nitrogen use efficiency or stress tolerance for applications in agriculture, biotechnology, and infection biology.
The student will receive comprehensive training in molecular microbiology, bacterial
genetics, multi-omics, and RNA/protein biochemistry. Skills development will also include
experimental design, bioinformatics, cross-species functional testing, and scientific
communication, equipping the candidate for careers in academia, synthetic biology, applied
microbiology, and related fields.