Exploring fifty million years of antimicrobial ‘crowd-sourcing’ by bdelloid rotifers

Organisms risk being overwhelmed by rapidly evolving natural enemies, unless they generate new resistance variants quickly enough. Typically, animals and plants use sex to create new resistance genotypes. We recently discovered a case that challenges this paradigm. Bdelloid rotifers encode thousands of horizontally acquired genes domesticated from bacteria, fungi and plants. Hundreds of these alien genes are upregulated in response to attack by fungal pathogens. The genes match several unprecedented functions in animals, including giant genes predicted to synthesise bioactive molecules such as antibiotics.

This project will investigate the extraordinary possibility that bdelloid rotifers are stealing biosynthetic gene clusters from microbes on an unimagined scale, repurposing them to synthesise antimicrobial secondary metabolites normally inaccessible to animals, and re-deploying these compounds against their own natural enemies. Aims will include to characterise the compounds, how they might have changed during domestication by bdelloids, and investigate mechanisms for generating variability in bdelloid populations. This unusual animal system could provide a new source of antimicrobials that function safely in animal cells, as well as insights into the genomic steps needed to repurpose prokaryotic machinery to defend animals.

The project will explore a new approach for antimicrobial discovery by exploiting a non-model clade that has ‘hoovered up’ genes from the environment – an analogue of artificial heterologous genetic engineering running over millions of years. Tailored to the interests of the student, the project will comprise a blend of bioinformatic analyses of genome and transcriptome data, investigation of how putative compounds changed during the domestication process, lab work to characterise the chemicals being produced and their activity against microbes, exploring how bdelloids generate variability in their chemical defences, or optimising potential use of the system to develop new antimicrobials.

This project is part of the Evolutionary Biology theme in the Department of Biology.

Funding

This project is part of the DPhil in Biology programme, and is not a funded course at the University of Oxford; as such, students are expected to explore options for funding. However, we anticipate being able to offer around 6 full graduate scholarships to incoming DPhil Students in 2025-26.

You will be automatically considered for several Oxford scholarships, which cover fees and stipend, if you fulfil the eligibility criteria and submit your graduate application by 8 January 2025. Scholarships are awarded based on academic achievement and potential to excel as a DPhil student. 

For further details about searching for funding as a graduate student visit the graduate study information on our website.

Eligibility

For full entry requirements and eligibility information, please see the main admissions page.

How to apply

The deadline for applications for 2025-2026 entry is midday 8 January 2025. We will continue to accept applications submitted after 8 January 2025, but these late applications will not be considered for scholarship funding.

You can find the admissions portal and further information about eligibility and the DPhil in Biology Programme at the University’s graduate admissions page.

Please quote the Project Reference Code in the ‘Proposed field and title of research project, if applicable’ field in the application form.

Project code: TB-01-2024

Institution Website: https://www.biology.ox.ac.uk/graduate-study