PhD student position

Department of Neurotoxicology, Mossakowski Medical Research Institute Polish Academy of Sciences is recruiting PhD student to the NCN OPUS 20 project entitled „Role of SAT1 glutamine transporter in the neurotransmission balance: implications for anxiety-related disorders” (2020/39/B/NZ5/01962).

Leader: prof. dr hab. Magdalena Zielińska

The project:

Anxiety disorders are sixth leading cause of disability worldwide in terms of years of life lived with disability and are characterized by intense and prolonged negative emotions such as feelings of fear and distress. Two factors are involved in the pathogenesis: genes and stressor events. The genome-wide association study proposed the SLC38A1 gene, coding for SAT1 glutamine transporter, as a candidate gene associated with stress vulnerability and anxiety. Recent data has proven that SAT1 regulates vesicular GABA content and induces high-frequency membrane oscillations, indicating that its dysfunction likely to predispose to anxiety behavior.

The project objective is to unravel the relationship between SAT1 depletion and stress vulnerability in correlation with changes in the GABAergic and glutamatergic system and BDNF-induced neuronal complexity.

A state-of-the-art methodology and SAT1ko mouse will be used to explore the impact of SAT1 transporter depletion on GABAergic/glutamatergic balance in the prefrontal cortex of mice brain in the context of anxiety-like phenotype. The experiments will be performed (1) in vivo on SAT1ko mice subjected to stress procedure to model rodent anxiety-like behavior; (2) ex vivo on isolated prefrontal cortex slices for electrophysiological recordings and morphological analysis; (3) ex vivo on cells isolated from SAT1ko/wt animals to uncover molecular aspects; (4) human postmortem brain tissue.

In the future perspective, project results likely to evolve into usefull tool in designing specific diagnostic or therapeutic methods absent in the current practice.Location and duration:

Department of Neurotoxicology, Mossakowski Medical Research Institute Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, 02-106 Poland, Pawinskiego Street 5 (http://www.imdik.pan.pl ).

PhD student will be recruited for 36 months with the stipend according to NCN recommendations (introduced by the Resolution of the NCN Council No. 25/2019 of March 14, 2019 (uchwala69_2019_ang.pdf), starting November 2022.

Requirements: