Biomathematics & Statistics Scotland
Little is known about relationships between bacterial populations in the human colon. Certain bacterial species are thought to be responsible for production of specific short chain fatty acids (SCFA), which in turn can be utilised by other bacterial species. Some of these SCFA have associated health benefits; e.g. butyrate is thought to play a protective role against colon cancer. To improve gut health, a better understanding of how dietary components (including prebiotics and probiotics) influence bacterial populations and their products is needed.
Although some information on relationships between bacteria and their products has been obtained from studies in vitro, it is not known whether this information can be extrapolated to the more complex situation in vivo. Data obtained from studies in vivo mainly consist of faecal samples, which may not be fully representative of the bacterial population in the colon.
This project will look at one or more of the following aspects:
Such approaches may include: incorporation of prior knowledge obtained from studies in vitro and/or from biological knowledge, model averaging, subject-specific correlation structures, modelling of absence/presence of bacterial strains followed by modelling of the actual bacterial level conditional on the bacterial strain being present. Predictive qualities of the newly developed models will also be of interest.
This PhD project will be supervised by Dr Grietje Holtrop (BioSS, Aberdeen) jointly with the Dept. of Statistics, University of Warwick. The student will be based at the BioSS unit at the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health in Aberdeen. Applicants should have good mathematical and statistical knowledge and be interested in the application of statistical methods to complex data sets from biological research.
For further details, contact Grietje Holtrop
