Currently open: One fully funded PhD position

1) Alternative lifestyles of chlamydiae

Duration of contract: Up to 4 years 
Planned starting date: October 2025
Place of work: University of Vienna
Main supervisor: Matthias Horn
Supervision team: Astrid Collingro

 

Project description:

Chlamydiae are well-known human pathogens, with Chlamydia trachomatis being one of the leading causes of preventable blindness and sexually transmitted diseases. However, chlamydiae are also widely distributed in the environment, where they live primarily in protists such as amoebae. The obligate intracellular lifestyle of chlamydiae is ancient and can be traced back hundreds of millions of years. Recently, metagenomic studies have identified members of the Chlamydiota phylum in anaerobic environments and in phototrophic protists (algae). The aim of this work is to shed light on these unexpected chlamydial lifestyles. The project will involve protist cultivation and infection experiments, advanced fluorescence microscopy methods, genomics and transcriptomics approaches, and bioinformatics analyses. It will contribute to our understanding of the environmental lifestyle of chlamydiae and the emergence of their unique host-associated lifestyle.

Gender equality, diversity and non-discrimination

© Manuel Lavoriero

The University pursues a non-discriminatory employment policy and values equal opportunities, as well as diversity (http://diversity.univie.ac.at/). The University lays special emphasis on increasing the number of women in senior and in academic positions. Given equal qualifications, preference will be given to female applicants.

The University of Vienna has an institutionalised gender equality policy and within this framework VDSMES strives to strengthen the career development of female scientists at all qualifications levels and to support compatibility between family and work/training.

The Gender Equality and Diversity unit of the University of Vienna provides services which, based on the issue of gender equality, aim at ensuring equal opportunities for all university members.

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