This project aims to identify how different carbon and nitrogen sources regulate fungal chitinolytic activities. The student will use a combination of microbiologic, enzymatic, and bioinformatics approaches to achieve this goal.
Description: Chitin is the second most abundant polysaccharide on earth, being one of the main constituents of the invertebrate exoskeleton and fungal cell wall. Associated with the large quantities of fungal mycelia in soil, chitin and chitin derivatives accumulate in forest ecosystems, where there are decomposed by fungi. These latter have been extensively described as the main degraders of chitin through the production of various enzymes called chitinases. The degradation product of chitin, the N-acetylglucosamine, is assimilated by the fungi, both as carbon and nitrogen source. While the characterization of the chitinases has deserved much attention, how fungi regulate the secretion of these enzymes remains poorly explored, although they might have significant consequences for forest carbon storage and primary productivity. Specifically, because the chitin degradation product represents a carbon and a nitrogen source for fungi, complex regulatory mechanisms involving both nitrogen metabolism repression (NMR) and carbon catabolite repression (CCR) might be engaged.
Using a representative collection of forest fungi, the student will disentangle the nutritional drivers behind chitinolytic activity regulation. Specifically, the student will use different combinations of carbon and nitrogen sources to determine their effects on the amount and type of chitinases secreted by the fungi in the extracellular medium. Additionally, the student will apply comparative genomics tools to identify potential NMR and CCR master regulators across a wide range of fungal genomes. The student will learn fungal microbiology, extracellular enzyme activity quantification, and comparative genomics, which are valuable skills for a potential career in biotechnology or academic research.
You will primarily work with Dr. Dimitrios Floudas and Dr. François Maillard in the Microbial Ecology group.
Disciplines: microbiology, enzymology, and bioinformatics
This project is designed for a MSc student (optimally 60 cr) and the start date is flexible.
Contact information: Dimitrios Floudas and François Maillard