Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Interdisciplinary EMBL postdoc fellowship in genome evolution and chemical-biology

The EMBL Interdisciplinary Postdocs (EIPOD) program is now accepting applications (deadline 12 of September). This program funds interdisciplinary research projects between different units of the EMBL. Applicants are encouraged to discuss self-defined project ideas with EMBL scientists or select up to two project ideas available at the EIPOD website. 

One of the project ideas listed this year is for a joint project between our group (EMBL-EBI) and the group of Nassos Typas at the EMBL Genome Biology Unit in Heidelberg. Here is a short description of project idea, entitled "Modeling genotype-to-phenotype relationships in a bacterial cell":
Understanding how phenotypic variability originates from mutations at the level of the DNA is one of the fundamental problems in biology. Sequencing of genomes for multiple individuals along with rich phenotypic profiling data allows us to pose the question of how the sum of mutations in each individual genome results in the observed phenotypic differences. The goal of this project is to develop computational methods to predict the consequences of mutations and gene-content variation on fitness in different conditions for different strains of E. coli.
The Typas group develops high-throughout approaches to study gene function via chemical-genetics and genetic-interaction screening. Previous publications and current research interests are listed in the group webpage. Our group is generally interested in studying the evolution of cellular interaction networks and in this context is interested in understanding how mutations and gene-content variation results in phenotypic consequences for different individuals.

Potential applicants are encouraged to get in touch to discuss a project proposal that relates to this topic. We are particularly keen on applicants with previous experience in any of the following: chemical-informatics, chemical-biology, protein and genome evolution, sequence/structural based prediction of effect of mutations, bacterial pan-genome studies.