[Fully funded 4-year PhD CASE studentship with payment of tuition fees, annual stipend of £20,780 (2025/6 rate), and a Research Training Support Grant of £5,000 per year.] This fully funded PhD studentship at the University of East Anglia offers an exciting opportunity to investigate how alternative splicing shapes cell–cell communication in key biological niches. Supervised by Dr Iain Macaulay, the project will focus on the bone marrow stem cell niche and tissue-resident immune cells, exploring how receptor and ligand proteins are edited through alternative splicing to produce functionally distinct isoforms. The research will employ advanced single-cell long-read RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to uncover the complexity of cellular interactions and build high-resolution maps of receptor-ligand communication. Students will develop tools to study these interactions at the isoform level, gaining expertise in cell sorting, sequencing technologies, and computational biology. The project is supported by an interdisciplinary team and provides access to world-class facilities at the Earlham Institute and Imperial College London. Training will cover genomics, immunology, and clinical research, preparing graduates for careers in both academic and applied research. The studentship is part of the Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Programme (NRPDTP), which offers a comprehensive professional development curriculum and a three-month professional internship placement (PIPS) to enhance employability. The CASE studentship, in partnership with Inspiralis Limited, covers tuition fees, a generous annual stipend (£20,780 for 2025/6), and a research training support grant (£5,000 per year). Applicants should have a background in biological or biomedical sciences and a keen interest in gene regulation and immune function. The application deadline is 2 December 2025, with interviews for shortlisted candidates scheduled for early February 2026. For further details on eligibility and application procedures, visit the NRPDTP website.

[4-year Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership PhD CASE studentship with Inspiralis Limited. Includes payment of tuition fees, £20,780 annual stipend, and £5,000 per annum Research Training Support Grant.] This fully funded PhD studentship at the University of East Anglia offers an exciting opportunity to investigate how enhancers orchestrate cardiovascular fate using single-cell multi-omics approaches. The project focuses on the earliest stages of vertebrate cardiovascular development, exploring how cardiac and hematoendothelial progenitor cells diverge from a common origin in the lateral plate mesoderm. While key transcription factors are known, the role of non-coding DNA enhancers in regulating gene expression during heart and vessel formation remains less understood. Mutations in these elements are increasingly linked to congenital heart and vascular defects, but their identification and functional validation in the embryo is challenging. The successful candidate will apply advanced single-cell technologies, including scRNA-seq and scATAC-seq, to map the enhancer landscape in the chick embryo, a model system well-suited for imaging and manipulation. Training will be provided in bioinformatics to integrate gene expression and chromatin accessibility data, predict active enhancers, reconstruct gene regulatory networks, and identify conserved elements. Experimental work will include molecular cloning of candidate enhancers into fluorescent reporter constructs for live imaging and CRISPR-based perturbations to test enhancer function in vivo. The project is supervised by a collaborative team: Dr Andrea Munsterberg and Dr Gi Fay Mok at UEA, and Dr Iain Macaulay and Dr Wilfried Haerty at the Earlham Institute. Students will gain expertise in developmental biology, molecular genetics, imaging, and computational biology, and join a vibrant research community through the Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Programme (NRPDTP). The programme includes a three-month professional internship placement (PIPS) and comprehensive training in research and professional skills. Funding covers tuition fees, a £20,780 annual stipend, and a £5,000 per annum research training support grant. Applicants should have at least a UK 2:1 Honours degree (or equivalent) and meet English language requirements (IELTS 6.5 overall, 6 in each category). The position is full-time, starting October 2026. Applications close on 2 December 2026, with interviews scheduled for early February 2026. For more information, contact the supervisors or visit the NRPDTP website.