Postdoctoral position - Befattningen är under tillsättning eller redan tillsatt, och det är inte längre möjligt att lämna in en ansökan
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Umeå University, Medicinska fakulteten
Umeå University is one of Sweden’s largest higher education institutions with over 37,000 students and about 4,700 employees. The University offers a diversity of high-quality education and world-leading research in several fields. Notably, the groundbreaking discovery of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool, which was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was made here. At Umeå University, everything is close. Our cohesive campuses make it easy to meet, work together and exchange knowledge, which promotes a dynamic and open culture.
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The Faculty of Medicine, which consists of 13 departments, is responsible for biomedical research and courses in the field of nursing and health care and has an extensive research and graduate education in more than 80 subjects.
Postdoctoral Research Opportunity in Infection Biology at Umeå University, Sweden
Project: The type VI secretion system of Francisella tularensis
PI: Anders Sjöstedt
Postdoctoral position at the Department of Clinical Microbiology
The Department of Clinical Microbiology, Umeå University, is looking for a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher in the area of bacterial secretion systems and structural dissection of such secretion systems. The two year full-time position will be at the Department of Clinical Microbiology, Umeå University.
Qualification requirements
To qualify, the applicant must hold a doctoral degree or a foreign qualification deemed equivalent to a doctorate in Bacteriology, Molecular Biology or a similar area.
The applicant should have extensive experience working in the field of bacterial pathogenesis and have extensive experience of prokaryotic genetic systems. Experience of work with Francisella tularensis is meritoreous. The applicant must be able to work independently and excellent communication skills in English is a requirement.
Applicants who have completed a doctoral degree no more than three years before the application deadline are prioritized. If there are special reasons, applicants with a doctoral degree more than 3 years old could be considered.
Project description
The aim is to delineate the regulation of assembly and the functions of the components of the Type VI secretion systems (T6SS) of Francisella tularensis (Ft). Ft encodes an atypical T6SS, which allows this highly virulent, intracellular bacterium to invade and replicate within the cytosol of eukaryotic cells and the T6SS is thereby essential for Ft virulence. While T6SSs have been the focus of an intense research effort for over a decade, our understanding is still incomplete regarding many of the functions of T6SSs in general and that of Ft in particular.
One focus will be on the characterization of the baseplate, the foundation on which the external part of the machinery rests. Detailed structural knowledge is very limited regarding the Ft baseplate, a consequence of the low sequence identity between Ft T6SS components and those of prototypic T6SSs. The research will be carried out by generating specific mutants and constructs encoding tagged T6SS components. These will then be tested by a variety of techniques to detect the localization and secretion of the proteins, as well as their protein interaction partners. Specifically, we are conducting detailed analysis by means of two-hybrid interaction analysis, immunoprecipitation, ascorbate peroxidase 2 (APEX)-tagging, and confocal and electron microscopy methods.
A second focus will be to further elucidate the critical role of the ClpB chaperone for the T6SS (Alam et al., Scientific Reports, 2018). We made the novel finding that its role for the control of T6S is dissociated from its role as essential for the heat shock response (Alam et al., Plos Pathogens, 2020). To further understand the underlying mechanisms is one aim. Much Ft research has focused on the control of T6SS assembly in the environmental bacterium F. novicida. Therefore, another aim will be to study clinically important Ft subspecies to see if the mechanism is conserved, with a special focus on ClpB and its role for the assembly/disassembly of the T6SS.
Webpages: https://www.umu.se/en/research/groups/anders-sjostedt/
https://www.umu.se/personal/anders-sjostedt/
Application
The application must contain the following documents in English: A one page cover letter highlighting your most important first-author publication in an international scientific journal and general research interests, a CV (max 2 pages) including a list of publications and contact information for two or three reference persons.
Submit the application electronically via Varbi. The documents should be compiled in one file in word or pdf-format. Last day of submission is 2021-01-07 (January 7).
Contact information
For further information, please contact Professor Anders Sjöstedt, Dept. of Clinical Microbiology. Anders.Sjostedt(at)umu.se
Welcome with your application!
| Type of employment | Temporary position |
|---|---|
| Contract type | Full time |
| Number of positions | 1 |
| Full-time equivalent | 100 % |
| City | Umeå |
| County | Västerbottens län |
| Country | Sweden |
| Reference number | AN 2.2.1-1626-20 |
| Contact |
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| Union representative |
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| Published | 26.Nov.2020 |
| Last application date | 07.Jan.2021 11:59 PM CET |