Study plan

Student is ready to the state doctoral examination after passing all study duties, such as passing required theoretical courses, getting language proficiency, accomplishing obligation of teaching development, in the half of standard study period. Therefore, student performs state doctoral exam in the 5th or 6th semester of the study at the latest. State doctoral examination is organized as an interview where student is expected to demonstrate general orientation in the field and capabilty of communication and discussion with examinators. The questions asked belong to some of following areas:
structure and molecular principles of function of microbial, plant and animal cells and their viruses
mechanisms of mutagenesis, recombination, transposiotion and DNA reparation
molecular base of carcinogenesis
principles of cell signalling
characterization and use of stem cells
principles driving cell proliferation, differentiation and death
genetic engineering and gene therapy
genomics and proteomics
molecular base of genetic diseases
general, molecular and developmental genetics
medical genetics and cytogenetics
genetics of quantitative tratits
The student proves accomplishing of duty to present his/her data on international conference, prepare Ph.d. thesis and submits the application
for its defence by the end of the 8th semester at the latest.

Study requirements (20% workload)
Passing the courses related to the theme of Ph.D. thesis and extending the knowledge in the field, pertinently the courses deepening the manager competence - so called "soft-skills" courses, such as S4001 Presentations in international forum, S4003 Guiding the scientific career, S4004 Researach funding - training in grant applications, D01 Publish or Perish: The art of research and scientific writing, apod. (18 credits/ the first 4 semesters)
Doctoral seminar UEB (16 credits/8 semesters)
MU Life Sciences Seminar (8 credits/the first 4 semesters)
Assistance in practical courses for undergraduates (150 hours total during the whole study) - circa 5% workload
Acting as supervisor and opponents of Bachelor thesis.
Passing the state doctoral exam in the 5th or 6th semester (at the latest).

Research requirements
working on the theme of Ph.D. thesis during the whole period of study (min. 70% workload - incl. publishing activities )
passing XD020 (Half-way thesis) in the 5th semester: preparation of brief written progress report and short oral presentation on the current state of work on PhD project in the middle of study to members of programme board
presentation of results on seminars (continuously) and scientific conferences (at least one active participation on international conference is regquired)
short-term scholarship (1 month at least) in laboratory abroad is mandatory (5% workload)

Publishing requirements
At least one article with imapact factor that is ranked above the field median where student is the first author or two articles (first autorship in one of them, at least) in international journals with impact factor exceeding one, regardless the median ranking. Affiliation of students to Department of Experimental Biology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University is mandatory in these articles.

Current PhD thesis topics:

https://www.sci.muni.cz/en/studies/doctoral-degree-study-programme/24073-molecular-and-cell-biology-and-genetics (tab Dissertation topics)

Selected topics of defended PhD theses:

Protein engineering for analysis of structure-functin relationships of enzymes (Veronika Lišková), defendened on May 11, 2018
Mechanismus of anti-cancer effects of wedelolactone (Tereza Kučírková), defended on April 20, 2018
Mechanisms of DNA repair analyzed by methods of advanced confocal microscopy (Jana Suchánková), defended on March 16, 2018
Complex analysis of genomes of unique bacteriophages and plasmids equipped with genes coding for exfoliative toxins A and B in Staphylococcus aureus (Tibor Botka), defended on October 20, 2017
Rearrangements of nucleoli in embryonal stem cells (Michal Franek), defended on October 13, 2017