Stage Master

The immune system protects us from external/internal insults and has key roles in patterning, tissue formation and metabolism. In addition, immune cells are involved in metabolic, neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases, making them potential therapeutic targets. Due to their medical relevance, the biology of these migratory and heterogeneous cells as well as the complex interactions established with the rest of the organism make the object of intense investigation. The aim of our project is to build a comprehensive repertoire of immune cells in Drosophila and to understand their roles upon activation of inflammatory pathways.
In this project, we propose to investigate the immune cells of Drosophila using state of the art sequencing technologies (RNAseq, single cell RNA sequencing). For the whole duration of the project, the candidate will work in close collaboration with a post-doctorant and a PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Giangrande. The candidate will have the opportunity to analyse high throughput sequencing data (RNAseq, single cell RNAseq) to characterise the molecular signature of the immune cells. The analyses will be carried out using Python, R and/or shell scripts.