Post-Doctoral Position in Systems Biology of C. elegans
This project has been funded by the European Research Area (ERA) call on Systems Biology. It links 5 labs (LMB-Cambridge, Liverpool, Barcelona, Paris and Wageningen) on a 3-year programme of work to identify regulatory genes involved in establishing biomedically-relevant phenotypes in C. elegans using a combination of microarray based eQTL approaches and network analysis and graph theory.
The project involves the identification of functional gene-gene relationships of stress-responsive genes by eQTL analysis using a panel of 200 recombinant inbred lines developed by the Wageningen lab of Jan Kammenga. The exact genetic constitution of each line will be determined in Liverpool using next-gen DNA sequencing on the large-scale SOLiD platform recently implemented (www.liv.ac.uk/cgr), and the SNP profile will resolve each eQTL to the gene level. The trans-regulatory gene-gene relationships will be modelled using graph theory and network depictions by Madan Babu (LMB), Ben Lehner (Barcelona) and Sergei Nechev (Paris). Based on these early models, genetic follow-up experiments in Wageningen, Liverpool and Barcelona will confirm the regulatory genes and establish their functional relationships to other genes.
The Liverpool postdoc will initiate the sequencing elements with genome assembly onto a reference sequence, followed by SNP calling and informatic analysis. He/she will engage in eQTL experiment using microarrays, and the fine resolution of regulatory loci controlling phenotypes, followed by genetic manipulation experiments designed to confirm the regulatory relationships. We have excellent nextgen (SOLiD/454) sequencing facilities with the informatics support of >10 postdocs.
This position would suit someone with experience of working with C. elegans and all of the usual techniques, but who is interested in the use of contemporary ‘omics analysis to define genome-wide patterns of regulation. He/she would join a large and active research group.
Interested candidates should in the first instance contact Prof Andrew Cossins (cossins@liv.ac.uk; +44 (0)151 795 4509). The position is available from 1st March 2010.