The scientific issues of the PhD course in BIOSCIENCES reflect the most important topics of modern biology, from basic to applied research and relate to all levels of biological organization, from molecules to organisms and from cells to ecosystems. The disciplinary range offered reflects the research trends at the Department of Biology, the administrative and scientific home of this PhD course, whose full scientific representations are the four different curricula offered.

Our PhD students have access to first-class facilities (see below) at the Biology Department and work within a friendly and strong international research community under the supervision of experts of the field. Research opportunities are multi-disciplinary, spanning the whole range of biological research. Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged as well as the interaction among PhD students (approx. 40 PhD students are enrolled at the Biology department), post-docs and the over 70 faculty members of the Department.

Certain lines of research will be carried out at research centres associated with the Department of Biology, such as the Centre for Innovative Biotechnologies (CRIBI), the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua, the Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine in Padua, the Marine Station of the Department of Biology, Chioggia, Italy.

Facilities at the Department of Biology include: Electron and confocal microscopy; Electron Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; Ultracentrifuges; Cell culture facilities; the Unipd Zebrafish Facility (Zebrafish line maintenance and acquisition, transient lines from DNA injection, mutant, stable transgenes, whole mount in situ hybridization, morpholino, Crispr/cas and Talen technology, microinjection, germ line transformation, mRNA injection); aquaria facilities for breeding tropical fish and Xenopus; plant growth facilities (including a T/Light-controlled greenhouse); barrier and conventional mouse facility (with more than 2000 cages); flow cytometry facility (FacsCanto and FacsCalibur); P2 viral and bacterial vector facility; Next Generation High Throughput DNA Sequencing, Gene Expression Analysis, Peptide Facility; Cluster of High Performance Computers for scientific calculus and bioinformatic analysis of Next Generation Sequencing and protein analyses and dedicated software (http://genomics.cribi.unipd.it/main/category/bioinformatics/). A library with more than 40,000 volumes is permanently (24h) accessible to PhD students and provide online access to scientific bibliographic databases (WoS, Scopus) and thousands of scientific journals.