Exploring Plant Biochemistry in Brassicaceae

Description

Specialized plant metabolism offers a plethora of biochemicals that provides a largely unexplored resource for drug discovery and agrochemicals. Diversity of specialized metabolites evolved to a large extend in co-evolution with pests and pathogens, resulting in structural and functional complexity that still remains understudied. Discovery of novel compounds and underlying pathways is guided by molecular omics data, including genomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics. In this project, omics data of crop species and wild relatives in the Brassicaceae family has been collected to investigate the phytochemical space and to discover biosynthetic pathways across species and genotypes.
We offer an opportunity to work on a thesis project (BSc./MSc.) that combines computational analysis of omics data (genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics), and techniques in molecular lab work, depending on your preferences. In your project, you have the option to become familiar with a set of cheminformatics tools, bioinformatics pipeline building, genome mining and comparative genomics, tissue culture, and phylogenetic analysis.

Supervisor