Effects of pesticides on soil, animal and human microbiomes

Background:

While pesticides are tested for acute toxicity to plants and animals before being approved for commercial use, their potential effects on the soil microbiome and human and animal gut microbiome are not well known. As part of the SPRINT project (sprint-h2020.eu), data is being generated on the microbiome composition of soil on conventional and organic farms, the microbiome composition in the faeces of farm animals, but also gut and nasal microbiome composition of organic or conventional farmers, neighbors of farmers, and consumers of farm products.

Objectives:

The project objective is to identify, from the microbiome data, bacterial species that might be susceptible to pesticides using information on pesticide use and measured pesticide residues on each of the farms. The aim of the project is to validate these hypotheses in the laboratory.

Methodology:

You will explore the effect of selected pesticides on growth and killing of selected bacterial species. Together with your supervisors you will design your own project and select your own assays and experiments, using results from the microbiome analyses performed within SPRINT as a starting point. The project will combine experiments in the laboratory (viability and growth assays, QPCR) with statistics and data analysis (transcriptomics analysis, metagenomics analytics, PCA). Depending on your background, expertise and learning goals, you can discuss with your supervisors to focus more on lab techniques or data analysis.

Requirements:

For this project, we are looking for BSc/MSc students in the field of Biology, Biotechnology, Animal Sciences, Bioinformatics or related fields. We expect that the student has interest in microbiome research, and/or molecular methods, and/or bioinformatics, and/or microbiology methods.

Contact information:

Maaike Gerritse (email: maaike.gerritse@wur.nl ), PhD candidate Host-Microbe Interactomics. Visiting address: Zodiac, De Elst 1, 6708 WD, Wageningen.