Project properties
Title Uncovering Microbiome-Mediated Drought Tolerance in Plants with Bioinformatics
Group Plant Physiology, Laboratory of
Project type internship
Credits 24
Supervisor(s) Chrats Melkonian (WUR&UU) & Rumyana Karlova (PPH - WUR
Examiner(s) Dr. Rumyana Karlova
Contact info chrats.melkonian@gmail.com.
Begin date 2025/09/01
End date 2026/02/01
Description Are you passionate about using computational tools to explore the complex relationship between plants and microbes? We invite motivated MSc students to join our interdisciplinary research team at the Laboratory of Plant Physiology at Wageningen University & Research.
During your internship, you will work with large-scale multi-omics datasets to study how beneficial microbes support plant growth and drought resilience. Your primary focus will be on analyzing high-throughput microbiome data, including extensive 16S rRNA and ITS amplicon sequencing from a wide range of plant species. You will also explore a comprehensive collection of microbial isolated genomes and targeted metagenomics to conduct phylogenomic and pangenomic analyses. In addition, you will integrate metabolomics data from plant roots to understand how microbial interactions influence plant metabolism under stress conditions. Using these insights, you will contribute to the rational design of synthetic microbial communities aimed at promoting plant health. Where relevant, genome-scale metabolic models and metabolic pathway analysis will be applied to key microbes identified through the previously conducted analyses.
This project will give you hands-on experience in advanced data analysis techniques, including microbiome profiling, comparative genomics, workflow development, and network analysis. You will use tools such as anvi’o, PanTools, and IQ-TREE, and gain familiarity with R, Python, and bash scripting. The internship will also provide opportunities to participate in collaborative meetings and discussions within the MiCRop consortium, connecting you with scientists from several leading Dutch universities and research institutes.
This internship offers a dynamic and supportive environment, with mentorship from experienced researchers and the possibility to contribute to scientific publications. The project is hosted at the Laboratory of Plant Physiology in Wageningen. For more information about the lab, visit: https://www.wur.nl/en/research-results/chair-groups/plant-sciences/laboratory-of-plant-physiology.htm.
If you are interested, please send your CV and a short motivation letter to chrats.melkonian@gmail.com. This is your chance to strengthen your bioinformatics skills while contributing to sustainable solutions in plant science.
Used skills Bioinformatics, Genomics, Metabolism (Microbial ecology is a plus)
Requirements Programming in R or Python, Advanced Bioinformatics