Research Associate - Cambridge, United Kingdom - University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

Verified Company

Cambridge, United Kingdom

2 weeks ago

Posted by:

Tom O´Connor

beBee Recruiter

Description

Applications are invited for a post-doctoral research associate in Receptor Evolution to work with Prof Uta Paszkowski at the Crop Science Centre, starting between 1 August and 1 September 2021.

The beneficial interaction of plants with endomycorrhizal fungi commences via mutual recognition in the rhizosphere.

We identified a receptor complex that is required for perception of beneficial fungi by plants [Gutjahr, Gobbato et al., Science (2015), Choi et al., Nat Commun 2020], and also for plant development.

Preliminary data suggest that the symbiosis signalling ability is a derived and not an ancestral trait. This project seeks to reproduce the evolutionary trajectory in order to define the protein features that condition signalling specificity. The projected work will involve a high-resolution metagenomics approach combined with functional validation in rice.

Applicants must have a solid background in plant molecular genetics; available knowledge in basic bioinformatics, running command-line tools and performing data analysis in R or Python would be advantageous.

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 28 months in the first instance.

The University has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK.