Hafen Lab: Semester project and/or Master thesis on the genetics of inter-individual variations in human sensory perception
The project lies at the intersection of genetics, psychophysics of smell, and data democracy. Students will have the opportunity to combine wet lab work, study design, and computational analysis. Students should be able to write simple scripts in R, Matlab, or Python or have the willingness to acquire and develop these skills.
The human sense of smell varies greatly from one individual to the next. The most pronounced form of these variations are specific anosmias – the inability to smell certain substances while the sense of smell is otherwise unaffected. Specific anosmias are surprisingly common and often genetically determined. The goal of the project is to identify, which specific genetic variation is responsible for the inability to smell a specific compound and to thereby build up a map that links aroma compounds to the receptors that perceive them.
Due to the unusually high penetrance of these genetic effects, significant genotype-phenotype associations can be observed in studies with just a few dozen participants. This makes it possible for a single student to make significant progress in one such study within limited time of a semester project or Master thesis and to contribute to multiple stages of such a study from study design, sensory and genetic testing to data analysis and visualization. The latter will require the ability to write simple scripts in R, Matlab, or Python. The student should have this skill or should be willing to develop it within the scope of the project.
The project also allows students to explore questions related to data democracy, citizen science, and digital self-determination. The overall research project was launched as a citizen science project at the 2017 Scientifica Science Fair and makes use of the MIDATA cooperative’s data platform. Via this data platform, study participants can contribute, access, and manage the research data about them in an anonymous way.
Interested students are encouraged to contact the project’s coordinator Ulrich Genick