利物浦大学招收微生物学博士
About the Project
Dietary supplements have long been used for hygiene and health benefits, be that in the form of supplements containing natural nutritional compounds (Vollmer, West, & Lephart, 2018), or in the form of psychobiotics that act on the gut and skin microbiome (Cammisuli et al., 2022).
Nutricosmetics represent a novel way of enhancing wellbeing via the ingestion of compounds that act on biological pathways to induce positive effects for the user (Dini & Laneri, 2019). Research has identified a number of compounds that enhance skin and hair wellbeing. For example, the use of lipids (Huang, Wang, Yang, Chou, & Fang, 2018), peptides (Asserin, Lati, Shioya, & Prawitt, 2015), polysaccharides (Papakonstantinou, Roth, & Karakiulakis, 2012), minerals such as zinc and selenium (Gollner, Voss, von Hehn, & Kammerer, 2017), vitamin E (Keen & Hassan, 2016), vitamin C (Wang et al., 2018) and secondary metabolites such as carotenoids (Baswan et al., 2021) and coenzyme-10 (Zmitek, Pogacnik, Mervic, Zmitek, & Pravst, 2017) have all shown positive effects on skin/hair wellbeing.
Given the involvement of the gut and skin microbiome in modulating mental and physical health (Allen, Dinan, Clarke, & Cryan, 2017), psychobiotics that alter the microbiome are a frequently used intervention to enhance health. This includes probiotics that contain beneficial microorganisms, prebiotics to facilitate the growth of beneficial microorganisms, or postbiotics containing the metabolites of beneficial microorganisms.
There is a wealth of research highlighting the benefit of natural compounds for skin health (Vollmer et al., 2018), as well as the benefit of psychobiotics for mental and physical health (Jafferany, Ferreira, Abdelmaksoud, & Mkhoyan, 2020; Liu, Walsh, & Sheehan, 2019; van der Geest et al., 2021). However, research to date has focused on clinical populations with little focus on holistic wellbeing in non-clinical populations, nor has any research investigated the long-term impact of nutricosmetics on mental and physical health. Furthermore, the role of orally taken compounds in modulating the microbiome has yet to be elucidated (Vollmer et al., 2018), providing a rich avenue of research for understanding the mechanisms that underpin nutricosmetics function.
The microbiota-gut-brain axis (MGBA) represents the interaction between the microbiome, the gut and the brain (Chakrabarti et al., 2022). Indeed, research has shown that the gut microbiome plays a role in psychopathology and other aspects of cognition (Papalini et al., 2019; Rogers et al., 2016). With the interplay between the gut/skin microbiome and the brain, the impact of microbiome modulation on brain function is important to be assessed in greater detail (Peirce & Alvina, 2019).
This project proposes to answer the following questions: 1) What are the short- and long-term impact of nutricosmetics on holistic wellbeing? 2) How do wellbeing related changes link to changes in gut/skin microbiome? 3) What is the relationship between nutricosmetics and wellbeing, and are there any neural markers of this relationship?
To assess these questions, the following methods will be used: 1) Longitudinal testing during nutricosmetic consumption 2) DNA extraction and shotgun metagenomics / 16S Sequencing / qPCR analysis of skin and gut microbiota samples 3) Multimodal neuroimaging techniques (fMRI & EEG) 4) Subjective measures of perceived stress, mood, and wellbeing using ecological momentary assessment (EMA)5)Neurobiological measures of stress, mood and wellbeing e.g., cortisol profiling.
The successful candidate will work with a diverse supervision team located in the Department of Psychology at the University of Liverpool and also benefit from supervision and placements with the industry partner (Unilever Research and Development, Port Sunlight, UK).
Attributes of suitable applicants:
Essential: Good (First/Upper Second Class) degree in any relevant subject area (e.g. psychology, neuroscience, computer science, biomedical sciences etc.)
Desirable: Experience of neuroimaging data collection and/or analysis using EEG or fMRI. Experience of programming in R statistics, Matlab, Python or similar. Experience of microbiome data collection and/or analysis techniques.
This project will be based in the Department of Psychology at the University of Liverpool. To apply for the position, please email Carl Roberts carl.roberts@liverpool.ac.uk attaching a covering letter, CV and details of 2 referees.
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