QUT offers a diverse range of student topics for Honours, Masters and PhD study. Search to find a topic that interests you or propose your own research topic to a prospective QUT supervisor. You may also ask a prospective supervisor to help you identify or refine a research topic.
Found 25 matching student topics
Displaying 1–12 of 25 results
Characterising the role of PARPs in DNA repair and cancer therapy
The genome of our cells is damaged multiple times each day, by various factors including sunlight and reactive oxygen species. In order for the DNA damage response to be efficient, our cells utilise highly coordinated repair pathways that function accurately and rapidly throughout the damaged cell. Cells that do not repair DNA damage correctly will accumulate damage and display increased genomic instability, which is a key hallmark of cancer cells, promoting their survival and rapid growth. DNA repair pathways are …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Unleashing the full potential of terminators for the regulation of gene expression in plants
Ultimately, the proper development of a plant and its ability to adapt to its environment is the result of how plants’ genes are expressed and interact with each other. Hence, it is of extreme importance to understand the mechanisms used by plants to regulate gene expression.Modification of the expression pattern of a gene is particularly important in modern biology. By changing the expression levels of a gene, it is possible to learn about its function, increase the production of a …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Biology and Environmental Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy
Improving human health through the microbiome
Every person harbours a unique collection of microorganisms - the majority of which reside in the gastrointestinal tract - that influences nearly every aspect of human health. As such, the gut microbiome is emerging as a potential tool for the diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of diseases.However, microbiome studies yield vast amounts of data, and the complexity of the microbiome makes it difficult to decipher interactions between microorganisms, host cells and environmental factors.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Microbiome Research
Symbiosis in microbial ecosystems
Soil systems are fundamentally important to the health of our planet, but the complexity of soil microbial communities makes them particularly challenging to study. Soil systems are amongst the most diverse microbial ecosystems on Earth in terms of the number of microbial species (and strains) present within individual samples, and in the breadth of functions encoded. Beyond complexity measured by counting distinct community members, interactions between microbial species including symbiosis, parasitism or commensalism are widespread and yet barely studied.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Microbiome Research
Genome to phenome: exploiting multi-omics and deep learning strategies to decipher importance of isoforms in health and behaviour
The molecular process that leads to multiple mRNA transcripts being produced from the same segment of DNA (aka gene) is known as alternative splicing (AS). This is a common form of regulation in higher eukaryotes, enabling the production of novel protein isoforms, which in turn are known to have a big impact on phenotype. Understanding the regulatory factors involved in AS, including epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation, will offer key insights into important biological phenomena (health disease, behaviour, production). …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Biology and Environmental Science
Surprising genomes
Genomic sequencing has changed radically since the first public sequencing projects more than 25 years ago. The original human genome project cost more than two billion dollars; sequencing a human genome now costs as little as a thousand, and we may sequence whole viruses and bacteria as a matter of routine.The challenge now lies in rapidly analysing these genomes as they appear, and understanding quickly whether there is anything interesting in the new sequence to warrant further inquiry. This project …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Potential for defective interfering particles (DIPS) to interrupt mammal-mosquito transmission of dengue virus
Dengue is a major mosquito-borne disease affecting 390 million people annually across 100 countries. Disease results from infection with dengue viruses, which are single positive-stranded RNA viruses in the family Flaviviridae. Defective interfering particles (DIPs) are virus-like particles with greatly reduced genomes that are byproducts of RNA virus replication and replicate only in the presence of standard virus (Vignuzzi and Lopez 2019, doi: 10.1038/s41564-019-0465-y). DIPs occur naturally during Dengue infection (Li et al. 2011, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019447) and suppress DENV replication …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Information retrieval and coding methods for large scale bioinformatics
Advances in sequencing technologies over the past two decades have led to an explosion in the availability of genomic sequence data and an increasingly urgent need for scalable clustering and search facilities. One approach is to encode sequences as binary vectors in a high-dimensional space, simplifying the comparison and allowing it to be computed very rapidly using bit-level operations.Coupled with these ideas is the need to provide clustering methods and efficient indexing and lookup in response to search queries. One …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Visualisation and sonification for genomic data sets
Successive revolutions in sequencing technology over the past two decades have led to an explosion in the availability of genomic data. Analysing biological datasets and identifying relationships within them is challenging - some of the process can be automated but interactive exploration offers a number of advantages, and supports serendipitous discovery.This project looks at visual analytics and sonification - the use of sound and musical encodings - to enhance our understanding of biological networks.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Technology, Innovation and Health
Professor Belinda Bennett is interested in talking to students who wish to undertake research on legal issues related to technology, innovation and health, regulation of innovative health technologies, legal issues related to genomics, the use of artificial intelligence in health care, and the use of robotics in health care.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Business and Law
- School
- School of Law
- Research centre(s)
-
Australian Centre for Health Law Research
Novel therapeutic strategies to treat advanced colorectal cancer
Colorectal cancer is a very common disease, with over 15,000 new cases diagnosed in Australia annually. Metastatic colorectal cancer describes advanced disease that has spread beyond the primary site. This is very aggressive and incurable in the vast majority of these patients. To improve outcomes for colorectal cancer, we are using cutting edge genomic and cell biology techniques to understand disease heterogeneity and optimise drug response. We are developing novel therapeutic interventions based on unique molecular signatures and are testing …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
The role of genetics in the development and mechanism of human traits
The Statistical and Genomic Epidemiology Laboratory (SGEL) studies the role of genetics in the development and mechanism of human traits, with particular emphasis on migraine, and the specific goal of identifying genetic risk factors and detecting common genetic links with other disorders, in particular depression, endometriosis, and epilepsy.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health
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