Project description

Primary supervisor - Prof Andrea Münsterberg

The cardiovascular system - comprising the heart, blood, and blood vessels - is the first functional organ system to form during vertebrate development, and its correct assembly is essential for life. Cardiac progenitor cells give rise to the heart, while hematoendothelial progenitors form blood and vascular endothelium. These lineages share a common origin in the lateral plate mesoderm yet diverge through tightly regulated gene regulatory networks.

While many of the key transcription factors are known, the enhancers - non-coding DNA elements that control when and where genes are switched on - are less well understood. Mutations in these elements are increasingly linked to congenital heart and vascular defects yet identifying and functionally validating them in the complex cellular environment of the embryo remains a major challenge.

In this new and exciting PhD project, you will apply cutting-edge single-cell multi-omic approaches (scRNA-seq & scATAC-seq) to map the enhancer landscape during early cardiovascular development in the chick embryo, a tractable and image-friendly vertebrate model. You will learn advanced bioinformatics to integrate gene expression and chromatin accessibility data to predict active enhancers, reconstruct gene regulatory networks, and identify evolutionarily conserved elements.

Experimentally, you will gain skills in molecular biology to clone candidate enhancers into fluorescent reporter constructs for live imaging and use CRISPR-based perturbations to test their function in vivo. This will reveal how specific enhancers shape cell behaviour, migration, and fate decisions during heart and vessel formation.

You will join a collaborative supervisory team across UEA (Andrea Münsterberg & Gi Fay Mok) and the Earlham Institute (Iain Macaulay & Wilfried Haerty), gaining skills in developmental biology, molecular genetics, imaging, and computational biology. This multi-disciplinary project offers the opportunity to make fundamental discoveries about the genomic control of cardiovascular development - one cell at a time.

Contact a.munsterberg@uea.ac.uk or g.mok@uea.ac.uk for more information.

The Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Programme (NRPDTP) is offering fully funded studentships for October 2026 entry. The programme offers postgraduates the opportunity to undertake a 4-year PhD research project whilst enhancing professional development and research skills through a comprehensive training programme. You will join a vibrant community of world-leading researchers. All NRPDTP students undertake a three-month professional internship placement (PIPS) during their study. The placement offers exciting and invaluable work experience designed to enhance professional development. Full support and advice will be provided by our Professional Internship team.

This project has been shortlisted for funding by the NRPDTP. Shortlisted applicants will be interviewed on 3,4 or 5 February 2026.

Visit our website for further information on eligibility and how to apply: https://biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/.

Our partners value diverse and inclusive work environments that are positive and supportive. Students are selected for admission without regard to gender, marital or civil partnership status, disability, race, nationality, ethnic origin, religion or belief, sexual orientation, age or social background.

To maximise accessibility and attract students from underrepresented groups to our programme we have introduced bespoke templates for applicant Personal and Research statements which will enable every applicant to fully represent themselves through providing suitable examples and evidence. These forms are on the NRPDTP website and must be used for these sections of the application form.

Entry requirements

At least UK equivalence Bachelors (Honours) 2:1. English Language requirement (Faculty of Science equivalent: IELTS 6.5 overall, 6 in each category).

Funding

This project is awarded with a 4-year Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership PhD DTP studentship. The studentship includes payment of tuition fees (directly to the University), a stipend to cover living expenses (2025/6 stipend rate: £20,780), and a Research Training Support Grant of £5,000pa for each year of the studentship.

References

Pouncey L, Mok GF. Unravelling early hematoendothelial development through the chick model: Insights and future perspectives. Dev Biol. 2025 Jul;523:20-31. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2025.04.008. Epub 2025 Apr 12. PMID: 40228783.

Ibarra-Soria X, Thierion E, Mok GF, Münsterberg AE, Odom DT, Marioni JC. A transcriptional and regulatory map of mouse somite maturation. Dev Cell. 2023 Oct 9;58(19):1983-1995.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2023.07.003. Epub 2023 Jul 26. PMID: 37499658; PMCID: PMC10563765.

Wittig JG, Münsterberg A. The Chicken as a Model Organism to Study Heart Development. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2020 Aug 3;12(8):a037218. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a037218. PMID: 31767650; PMCID: PMC7397825.

Münsterberg A, Hoppler S. WNT and BMP regulate roadblocks toward cardiomyocyte differentiation: lessons learned from embryos inform human stem cell differentiation. Stem Cell Investig. 2016 Aug 2;3:33. doi: 10.21037/sci.2016.07.03. PMID: 27580968; PMCID: PMC4981733.

One cell at a time: Uncovering how enhancers orchestrate cardiovascular fate using single-cell multi-omics (MUNSTERBERG_U26DTP)

Project description

Entry requirements

Funding

References