Molecular Mechanisms of Transcriptional Regulation in Response to Hormones and the Cellular Microenvironment

About the Project

Lead supervisor:Dr Andrew Holding

The student will be registered with the Department of Biology

The Holding Lab at the University of York develops and applies cutting-edge genomics, proteomics, and chemical biology technologies to explore how transcription factors and chromatin regulators control gene expression in response to cellular signals. We are particularly interested in understanding how hormone signalling and the cellular microenvironment interact to drive changes in transcriptional networks relevant to cancer and healthy tissue.

Currently, we have projects available investigating:

• Tissue-specific regulation of glucocorticoid signalling, focusing on how context-dependent transcriptional responses shape physiological and disease outcomes.
• Evaluation of the oestrogen receptor cofactor ZMIZ1 as a potential therapeutic target and regulator of endocrine resistance in breast cancer.

Students joining the group will receive full training in experimental and/or computational methods appropriate to their chosen project, including next-generation sequencing (RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, single-cell RNA-seq), proteomics (RIME, DIA-NN), and bioinformatics or machine learning approaches to data analysis.

A second supervisor will be selected to complement the student’s interests, for example in computational biology, biochemistry, or cancer cell signalling.

We welcome motivated students from backgrounds in molecular biology, biochemistry, chemistry, or bioinformatics who are eager to apply interdisciplinary approaches to understanding gene regulation in health and disease.

The University of York is committed to recruiting future scientists regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation or career pathway to date. We understand that commitment and excellence can be shown in many ways and we have built our recruitment process to reflect this. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, particularly those underrepresented in science, who have curiosity, creativity and a drive to learn new skills.

The Department of Biology holds an Athena SWAN Gold Award. We are committed to supporting equality and diversity and strive to provide a positive working environment for all staff and students.

Entry Requirements: Students with, or expecting to gain, at least an upper second class honours degree, or equivalent, are invited to apply. The interdisciplinary nature of this programme means that we welcome applications from students with any biological, chemical, and/or physical science backgrounds, or students with mathematical background who are interested in using their skills in addressing biological questions.

Programme: PhD in Biomedical Science (3 year)

Start Date: 21 September 2026