Project Overview

Project Code: LS 07

Project name:

Explore steroid hormone metabolism in human associated microbes

TUM Department:

LS - School of Life Sciences

TUM Chair / Institute:

Translational Microbiome Data Integration

Research area:

Microbiome research

Student background:

BiologyComputer Science/ Informatics

Further disciplines:

Participation also possible online only:

Planned project location:

Gregor-Mendel-Straße 2, 85354 Freising

Project Supervisor - Contact Details


Title:

Prof. Dr.

Given name:

Melanie

Family name:

Schirmer

E-mail:

melanie.schirmer@tum.de

Phone:

+49 8161 712368

Additional Project Supervisor - Contact Details


Title:

Given name:

Shen

Family name:

Jin

E-mail:

shen.jin@tum.de

Phone:

+49 8161 712368

Additional Project Supervisor - Contact Details


Title:

Given name:

Svenja

Family name:

Schorlemmer

E-mail:

svenja.schorlemmer@tum.de

Phone:

+49 8161 712368

Project Description


Project description:

1. Background and aim of the project
Steroid hormones play an essential role in the human body such as signaling during the reproduction process, controlling osmotic balance and regulating stress and immune responses. Endocrine disruptions are associated with a variety of human diseases, including polycystic ovary syndrome, type 2 diabetes and cancers. Recently, studies have shown that bacterial metabolism may affect endogenous hormone concentrations and may contribute to disease via disrupting hormonal signaling. In this project, the student will explore bacterial factors in steroid hormone metabolism using comparative genomic analyses for human-associated microbes. The aim is to generate a detailed functional profile of potential protein candidates from different bacterial genomes that are involved in steroid metabolism.

2. Milestones/Tasks
(a) Data preparation: compiling a database of bacterial genomes and predicting protein coding genes
(b) Generating a protein catalog with functional annotations
(c) Comparing gene content differences between these bacterial genomes using sequence- and structure-based approaches.

3. Requirements
You should be familiar with Bash and have basic programming skills in e.g. R or Python.

Working hours per week planned:

40

Prerequisites


Required study level minimum (at time of TUM PREP project start):

3 years of bachelor studies completed

Subject related:

Other:

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