Conteúdo do estágio - Núcleo de Engenharia Biológica IST

Formulário de Submissão de Propostas de Estágios
IST Summer Internships - 2015
Responsável pelo estágio (Aqui deve inserir o nome e o contacto da pessoa responsável
pelo estudante durante o estágio):
Dra. Luísa M. Figueiredo
[email protected]
217 999 512
Grupo de investigação / Empresa (Aqui deve inserir o nome da entidade acolhedora):
Instituto de Medicina Molecular, IMM, FMUL
Área de investigação / projeto de investigação (Aqui deve inserir o título do trabalho
que o estudante vai desenvolver/colaborar):
Using computational biology to study how parasites evade host defenses
Breve descrição do projecto a realizar pelo aluno (Aqui deve descrever em algumas
palavras o trabalho que pretende ver desenvolvido pelo estudante durante o estágio):
(Ver anexo)
Transcriptomica de ratinhos infetados com o parasita Trypanosoma brucei. “What
transcriptomic analysis can teach us about metabolism during an infection?
Duração (Aqui deve inserir a duração do estágio e as datas de início e término):
6-8 semanas
Possibilidade de financiamento (Aqui deve inserir se existe possibilidade de atribuir uma
bolsa de estágio ao estudante participante, ex: subsídio de alimentação, almoço no
refeitório, etc):
Indisponivel.
Cursos-alvo (Aqui deve inserir os cursos que, como Engenharia Biológica, pensa
reunirem as competências necessárias no estágio):
Engenharia Biológica, Engenharia Informática
Núcleo de Engenharia
Biológica do Instituto
Superior Técnico
Requisitos do candidato (Aqui deve inserir as competências que todos os candidatos a
este estágio devem reunir, ex: ano, conhecimentos, notas mínimas):
Conhecimentos em Microbiologia, Biologia Molecular, Bioinformática
www.neb.ist.utl.pt
NEB IST
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1
IST Campus Alameda
Torre Sul
1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
Email: [email protected]
Número de vagas
1
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Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Faculdade de Medicina de Lisboa
Supervision: Luisa Figueiredo, head of lab; Co-supervision: Daniel Neves, bioinformatician.
What transcriptomic analysis can teach us about metabolism during an infection?
Metabolism is a network of chemical reactions that generate energy necessary for life. Organisms
have multiple ways of hirearchically using sugars, lipids and proteins as a source of energy. The aim
of this project is to study how metabolism is affected during disease. We will use genome-wide RNASequencing data to identify metabolic changes that take place throughout infection.
The model we will use is an infection by the
parasite responsible for sleeping sickness. This is a
neglected and fatal tropical disease, threatening 60
million people in sub-Saharan Africa. Trypanosoma
brucei is a
unicellular and extracellular protozoan parasite. Our recent studies using mice revealed fat (adipose
tissue) to be a novel and major site where T. brucei parasites accumulate. Because fat is a key tissue
for metabolism, we postulate that (i) a T. brucei infection is probably associated with major metabolic
changes in the mouse; (ii) the parasite metabolism is probably altered when parasite is in fat relative
to blood; (iii) the metabolic changes in the mouse and in the parasite are probably correlated.
We hypothesize that the metabolic changes that take place in the host and in the parasite during
infection result from underlying alterations in gene expression. Therefore, the core of our proposal
consists of using a systems approach, in which RNA- Seq will be used to identify pathways and key
genes, whose expression is altered during infection in both host and parasite (a pilot RNA-Seq study
carried out in our lab supports the potential of this approach). The transcriptomes of the parasite and
host tissues at different points of infection will compared by unbiased correlation and clustering
analysis. We expect to identify host pathways that are significantly altered during infection and are
associated with (i) a specific infection stage; (ii) location in the fat; (iii) reciprocal changes in parasite
pathways.
The informartic analyses will be followed by an experimentalist to establish causal relationship.
Núcleo de Engenharia
Biológica do Instituto
Superior Técnico
Figure 4. RNA -Seq pilot study from mice infected by T. brucei.
2.100 mouse genes (10% of mouse transcriptome) from fat are differentially expressed on
day 6 of a
T. brucei infection.Volcano plot shows that 1.353 genes are up- regulated (red dots) and 747
genes are down-regulated (green dots) during infection.
www.neb.ist.utl.pt
NEB IST
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1
IST Campus Alameda
Torre Sul
1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
Email: [email protected]
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