Objective
"Protozoan parasites from diverse evolutionary lineages including Trypanosoma and Leishmania, Giardia, Entamoeba, Plasmodium and the microsporidia have a major impact on human health, especially in developing countries and among immunocompromised individuals. During their evolution as parasites these organisms can both lose pathways if they can steal host metabolites and gain genes that may help them to manipulate their hosts. It is this balance of genome reduction and genome expansion, and the potential consequences for parasites and their eukaryotic hosts, that I will investigate in my project. Although the genome evolution of bacterial pathogens is relatively well studied, much less is known about how eukaryotic parasites - which are much more similar to their hosts - evolve at the genomic level. A sophisticated analytical approach will be used to compare genome reduction and expansion events in different groups of parasitic eukaryotes and their free-living relatives, to identify lineage specific and common evolutionary features. This framework will be used to identify and characterize new, parasite-specific protein families that may be involved in pathogenesis and, as an important part of my training, I will collaborate with bench scientists in the host lab to test these hypotheses. By identifying the gene families that are gained and lost during the evolution of parasitic protozoa, I will identify cases when bacteria and eukaryotes evolve in similar and different ways and hence gain insight into how parasites evolve more generally. Moreover, since parasites may lose genes that are strongly conserved among free-living model organisms, they also represent “natural experiments” for understanding which features of eukaryotic cells are essential and which are lineage specific elaborations. As a test case to explore this principle I will investigate the evolution and conservation of proteins involved in a fundamentally important eukaryotic pathway - the cell cycle."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology protozoology
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics genomes
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
NE1 7RU Newcastle Upon Tyne
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.