Notice of Availability of 2 Experimental Thesis DEB

Students of our Master’s Degree courses are informed that 2 experimental theses are available at the Laboratory of Systematic Botany and Mycology, starting from October 2024.

The experimental thesis work, which will focus on the topic “Functional Metagenomic Investigations of Microbial Communities in Arid and Hyper-Arid Zones of American Deserts,” is part of the European project “DRYLIFE,” under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions – Postdoctoral Fellowships. In an era of global warming and expanding desertification, endolithic microbial communities, specialized life forms living inside rocks, thrive in conditions of aridity far beyond the tolerance of any other organism. These communities ensure the productivity and resilience of desert areas up to the limits of water sustainability, playing a crucial role in rock erosion and soil formation, thereby creating the conditions for the ecological succession of vegetation. The study is centered in a region of the Western United States that spans a gradient of conditions from semi-humid, arid, to hyper-arid, where an increase in temperature of up to 3°C is projected by the end of the century. The study involves the analysis of microbial diversity using NGS techniques through Amplicon-sequencing, Shotgun Metagenomics, and Gene Prediction approaches. Advanced bioinformatics, biostatistics, and machine learning models will be implemented to clarify the diversity and functional responses of communities along a gradient of increasing aridity and overall degradation of environmental conditions. This information will help clarify the fate of arid areas that are still biologically active due to these communities but are severely threatened by climate change.

For more information, please contact Dr. Claudia Coleine at coleine@unitus.it or Dr. Federico Biagioli at fbiagioli@unitus.it.