Postdoctoral Researcher (Smith Lab), John Innes Centre, Norwich

Closes: 4th July 2019 

Salary: £31,250 - £38,100 per annum depending on qualifications and experience 

Contract: Fixed Term Contract

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Laboratory of Professor Alison Smith.

Background

Starch in the endosperm of cereal seeds is the single largest source of calories in the human diet, and an important raw material for industry. Despite its importance we know very little about how starch granules are formed during endosperm development. It is apparent that the temporal and spatial patterns of initiation of starch granules have diverged and diversified enormously during the 66 million years of evolution of the Pooideae subfamily to which temperate cereals and forage grasses belong.

The project will be conducted in the Alison Smith lab, in close collaboration with the David Seung lab. Both labs have strong interests and expertise in molecular, genetic and biochemical aspects of the synthesis and turnover of starch in model and crop plants, and access to a wide range of other expertise and technologies that may be necessary for the project.

The project is a collaboration with Steve Kelly and his team in Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, who have expertise in comparative transcriptomics analyses.

The role

The aim of this project is to identify the genetic basis of starch granule diversity in endosperms, using techniques including screens of mutant populations, transgenesis, cell biology and microscopy, and modelling.

The postholder will use a range of visualisation and quantitation techniques to deduce how different spatial and temporal patterns of starch granule formation arise during seed development. They will work alongside and collaborate with a researcher using transcriptomic and bioinformatic approach to identify genes that underlie seed starch diversity

The post holder will be encouraged to attend courses in technical and professional skills, to travel to national and international meetings, and to present their discoveries to internal and external audiences.

The ideal candidate

Applicants must have a background that includes plant biochemistry/metabolism, genetics and molecular biology. Experience of working with cereals or grasses and with transgenic plants is desirable. The project requires good interpersonal skills and the ability to work both independently and as part of a team.

Additional information

Salary on appointment will be within the range £31,250 to £38,100 per annum depending on qualifications and experience.  This is a fulltime contract of 3 years.

Interviews will be held on 22 July 2019.

Further information and details of how to apply can be found here. Or contact our Human Resources team on 01603 450462 or nbi.recruitment@nbi.ac.uk, quoting reference 1003664.

Facility Manager, Edinburgh Genome Foundry

Are you keen to develop your project and people management skills in one of the most fast moving areas of biomedical research: lab automation and synthetic biology?

We are looking for a molecular biologist, with extensive project and people management skills, to drive forward an automated genome assembly platform – Edinburgh’s Genome Foundry.

The Foundry is a world-leading facility, based within the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, devoted to the design and building of DNA constructs and provision of a wide range of laboratory automation services. The Facility Manager at Edinburgh Genome Foundry will be responsible for the implementation of the Foundry’s business strategy, the effective management of its projects, people, resources and budgets.

This is a unique opportunity to apply and develop your skills within an exciting, challenging and collaborative work environment.

This post is offered on a full time, open ended basis.

Salary: £40,792 - £48,677

For further Information, please contact Dr Liz Fletcher (liz.fletcher@ed.ac.uk)

Closing date is 25 June 2019 at 5 pm.

For the full job description and to apply, visit:

https://www.vacancies.ed.ac.uk/pls/corehrrecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.jobspec?p_id=048000

Hive BioLab, the first community/DIYBio lab in Ghana, launches @hivebiolab

Hive BioLab is the first community/DIYBio lab in Ghana dedicated to the rapid prototyping of ideas in biology, research, enterprising bio-startups by helping and providing resources to students and graduates to translate science to businesses.

HiveBioLab is now active on twitter: @hivebiolab

A Biomaker team has made it to the final of the BBSRC Innovator of the Year 2019 Awards

A Biomaker team with participants from Quadram Institute Bioscience (QIB), the Earlham Institute (EI), the John Innes Centre (JIC) and the University of Oxford, has developed a small scale speed breeding cabinet, which has qualified them for the final of the BBSRC Innovator of the Year 2019 Awards. Read more about this story here:

https://www.jic.ac.uk/news/norwich-research-park-team-in-line-for-early-career-innovator-award/

Biomaker Training in Ghana: Introducing biologists and non-biologists to “Building science hardware for biology”

Participants tinkering with XOD and the Open Smart Rich UNO 3 microcontroller

The Biomaker Africa Programme is an initiative by the Open Plant fund, Synthetic Biology Strategic Research Initiative (Synbio SRI) and University of Cambridge. The programme, which is the first of its kind in Africa, aims to train biologists and non-biologists to design, prototype and share science hardware designs critical to building tools for laboratory use and for environmental sensing.

The Biomaker Africa Programme is geared towards enabling teams to design and build solutions to problems in agriculture, health, research and education specific to Africa. The programme is currently spread across 4 countries, Ghana (Kumasi Hive), South Africa (University of Pretoria), Egypt (Mansoura University) and Ethiopia (Bahir Dar University).

Kumasi Hive, one of the implementing nodes of the Biomaker Africa Programme, designed a two-month intensive training programme for students and graduates with backgrounds in biology and engineering. Ten participants were subsequently selected and began their training from March 2, 2019 to April 13, 2019. The curriculum driving the training was divided into various sections including:

1. Introduction to fundamentals of biology

2. Introduction to electronics and programming with XOD

3. Introduction to 3D printing and laser cutting

4. Design thinking

Participants of the Biomaker Training putting to use their 3D printing skills and 3D modelling skills.

The curriculum was designed with the aim of equipping participants with transdisciplinary knowledge and skills in biology, electronics, programming, 3D printing and design thinking. We believe this will enable the selected participants to build biology solutions to real world challenges specific to the Ghanaian context.

Each training track lasted for two weeks and took place on Saturdays and Sundays. The training sessions were characterized by short presentations by trainers, brainstorming sessions and research presentations by the participants. The training ended with a Biomaker hackathon, where the participants were provided with the Biomaker kits to build working prototypes in a day. After a design thinking session to expose the participants to the design thinking process and a human centred design approach, the participants came out with projects such as:

1. A solar-powered power pack for gel-electrophoresis to be used for field research and indoor laboratory use

2. Colorimeter for urine analysis

3. Water quality sensor for testing mercury and lead levels in water samples in mining areas in Ghana

4. Air quality sensor for environmental monitoring

5. Smart DIY biological safety cabinet for BSL1 work

By Harry Akligoh, Kumasi Hive, Ghana and Open Bioeconomy Lab.

Various job opportunities at Tropic Biosciences in Norwich

Tropic Biosciences:

“Based in Norwich, UK, Tropic Biosciences utilizes advanced genome editing (CRIPSR) and plant breeding technologies in developing new commercial varieties of tropical crops (e.g. coffee, banana, cacao). These multi-billion dollar crops play a critical role in supporting global nutrition and trade income but face intensifying disease and supply-chain challenges. We aim to solve these challenges through non-GMO genetic innovation.”

“CRIPSR technology is already transforming the agricultural industry at the hands of major seed companies like DuPont and Monsanto (‘Big Seed’) who use it to develop their future varieties of corn, soy and cotton. Our goal is to employ and further innovate this proven tool in the massive, largely untapped, tropical crops sector. To achieve this goal, we built a team of successful AgriTech entrepreneurs and world-class researchers with unique expertise in our target markets.”

Tropic Biosciences is currently looking for the following:

• Bioinformatician

• Biotech project manager

• Plant RNA biologist

• Molecular biologist

• Plant-pathogen interactions scientist

• Laboratory technician

For more information about Tropic Biosciences visit https://www.tropicbioscience.com/.

Developing a frugal and medium throughput method for assessing protein-DNA binding affinity

What are we doing?

Project collaborators Dr Susana Sauret-Gueto and Dr Eftychios Frangedakis, from the University of Cambridge.

We live in an era in which we can thoroughly investigate all the genetic material that makes up an organism, at the level of the whole genome. Understanding gene regulation, the set of processes that control the decoding of DNA, is an essential part of modern synthetic biology. Although the expression of a gene can be regulated at different levels, transcription is one of the most important steps in this complex multistage process. Transcription is the process of creating messenger sequences, known as RNA, which allow the translation machinery of the cell to build proteins according to the DNA instructions. The efficiency of transcription determines of how much of these messenger RNAs are produced.

Transcription is triggered by a collection of functional proteins known as transcription factors (TFs), which bind onto the DNA sequence in front of the part of the gene that encodes a protein (the coding sequence). This section of DNA is called the promoter. Previous research has demonstrated that the strength of a binding event between a TF and the part of a DNA sequence in the promoter that it can ‘recognise’, is pivotal in affecting the transcription of the associated gene. The strength of this binding event between a TF and its binding site (TFBS) is referred to as binding affinity. Our OpenPlant funded project, based at the Earlham Institute and the University of Cambridge, is focused of finding out how much variation in binding affinity exists in nature, and subsequently creating synthetic promoters with varying binding affinities. We aim to develop a new method to test how variation in TFBS sequence might affect binding affinity. With the knowledge gained, we can then build promoter sequences that activate transcription at the level we design, in the place in a plant we want.

Methods of assessing the binding affinity of TFs and DNA sequences already exist, but have limited scope for asking questions such as ours, either due to low throughput or high cost. One such method, which has been established for decades, is the Electrophoretic Mobility Shift Assay (EMSA). EMSA is based on visualising the travel of the bound TF-DNA complex through a jelly like matrix, or gel. Because each sequence and TF have to be made, and then individually ‘run’ through the EMSA gel, this method is difficult to scale up.

Figure 1: Comparing current protein-DNA binding assays.

Another option for testing the binding affinity of TFBS is based on a high-density DNA chip, also known as DNA microarray. This is essentially a glass slide with hundreds of thousands of short DNA sequences attached to the surface. The TF of interest can be synthesised in the lab and then hybridised with the chip. Hybridisation is just letting the binding between TF and TFBS occur as is would in the cell and, following this, the amount of TF bound on to each DNA sequence can be detected. However, the process of creating and reading such a chip is expensive and needs specific devices (Figure 1).

The aim of our work is to design and test a methodology which overcomes the shortcomings of available methods for testing TF binding affinity. Our goal is to provide a medium-throughput test of binding affinity, and we are designing our methodology to be easily replicable using affordable, readily available components. Approaching the problem from both synthetic and evolutionary backgrounds, we want to be able to test a range of binding sites for affinity, with enough replication to validate hypotheses. To do this we have developed the transcription factor relative affinity measurement pipeline (TRAMP).

Where did the ideas come from?

Inspired by the design of the DNA chip-based methods described above, we set out to design a method for assessing TF-DNA binding with as high a throughput as possible, whilst avoiding the high cost and specific requirements of the chip-based assay. We use a simple and cheap commercially available product to immobilise DNA onto the widely available lab workhorse; the 96-well plate. We have also used a recently developed method to tag our TF protein with a small peptide that, when bound to another peptide, gives off a signal. This signal is detectable in a plate reader, a piece of equipment widely used in modern labs. This new method allows us to easily quantify the amount of TF binding at a given TFBS, by measuring the brightness of the glow given off by the cumulative amount of the signal. These two components have allowed us to create a biochemical method of assaying protein-DNA binding affinity (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Assaying protein-DNA binding affinity using the transcription factor relative affinity measurement pipeline (TRAMP)

To maximise the efficiency of selecting TFBS to test in the assay we are designing, we have developed a novel computational tool. This allows us to leverage naturally occurring genetic variation in TFBS sequences gathered from publicly available population wide datasets. Instead of assaying thousands of random DNA sequences before finding a desirable one, we use several analytical methods to categorise natural variation along several parameters. We have been able to use a computational approximation of the binding event itself to score potential affinity. We also model the shape of the DNA double helix where the TFBS lies, allowing us to investigate the role of this physical property of DNA that has been suggested to be important in the efficiency of binding events.

These methods allow us to rapidly generate a set of suggested TFBS that should exhibit a range of binding affinities. This set of TFBS can be passed into the plate-based assay to be tested, and the findings used to test and further develop our understanding of binding affinity.

Where can this assay be applied?

We think that our work will be of interest to a wide range of biologists looking to understand the role of TF binding affinity in gene regulation. We hope by using TRAMP, we can find DNA sequences that exhibit different binding affinities to their corresponding TFs. Our aim is to be able to then replace the native TFBS in a promoter with the sequences we discover. We will use this approach to validate our findings, by linking the predictions and lab assays we have conducted back to transcription, the biological function we are interested in understanding.

It is our hope that our synthetic promoters will allow us to alter the activity of the promoter, meaning that when transcription occurs, the target gene will generate a different amount of messenger-RNA. If we can do this, we think our work will help scientists who want to use very specific gene expression patterns as part of synthetic biology strategies to synthesise valuable compounds like medicines. Our pipeline could also be useful for testing the effect of variation in TFBS between individuals, populations, or species.

By Dr Yaomin Cai and Dr Will Nash, Postdoctoral researchers at the Earlham Institute.

www.earlham.ac.uk

@EarlhamInst

[Closes 28th April 2019] Biomaker Challenge Africa Coordinator (Fixed Term), Department of Plant Science, University of Cambridge.

 The Global Challenges Research Fund is supporting a pump-priming programme to take the Biomaker Challenge to centres in Africa. Biomaker is an interdisciplinary programme that brings together multiple teams to build low-cost sensor devices and instruments for biology (https://www.biomaker.org). The Biomaker Africa programme is co-organised by the Synthetic Biology Strategic Research Initiative, the BBSRC-EPSRC OpenPlant, Centre for Global Equality, and OpenBioeconomy Lab in Cambridge. We are looking for a Challenge Coordinator for 12 weeks during May-Jul 2019 to take responsibility for coordinating participating teams and managing online communications and social media. This includes organising and publicising events and highlighting interesting projects online through writing and multimedia presentations, coordinating training and connecting teams who might be able to share knowledge and skills.

The appointee will form part of a team to deliver:

• A set of informational and training materials for biologists, engineers and interested public (e.g. the Maker community)

• Blog posts, photos, videos and social media content about Biomaker Africa

The position will provide an opportunity to travel to sites in Africa to help organise starter and training events, and to build a wide range of contacts in this area.

Skills gained include:

• Coordination, planning and organisation

• Networking skills between academia and industry, including sponsor liaison

• Communications including writing, photography, video production and social media

• Public speaking and presentations

• Introduction to technologies such as 3D-printing, electronics and DIY approaches to scientific instrumentation

The placement would suit someone with an interest in electronics, biology, and maker technologies e.g. 3D printing. Experience in other coordination and communication roles (paid or voluntary) is desirable. 

For full job description.

To apply, send a covering letter explaining your interests and suitability for the role and a CV to coordinator@synbio.cam.ac.uk

Joint OpenPlant Fund/ Biomaker call opens Monday 8 April and closes Monday 13 May

The next call for OpenPlant Fund applications is announced!

This year’s OpenPlant Fund call is joined with the Cambridge-Norwich Biomaker Challenge. More information on this joint call can be found at: https://www.biomaker.org/cambridge-norwich-challenge.

A summary of the important dates can be found below:

Call Opens: Monday 8 April

Mixer event in Cambridge: Thursday 25 April (Transport Norwich - Cambridge can be provided)

Call closes: Monday 13 May

Challenge Begins: Friday 24 May

Progress reports and presentations: Monday 29 July (OpenPlant Forum Event)

Challenge Closes/Open Technology Workshop: Saturday 2 November

Cambridge Science Festival

For this year's Cambridge Science Festival, Alex Ting (Cambridge OpenPlant coordinator) teamed up with Biomakespace, SciArt in Cambridge, and independent events producer Sophie Weeks to host The Art & Science Soirée. The event brought together scientists, engineers, artists and designers engaged in DIY science for an exciting evening of speed meets, snap-talks, hands-on demos, and unexpected encounters. 

The event opened with slam poetry by Peter Bickerton (Science Communicator, Earlham Institute) followed by a talk by Jim Ajioka (Co-founder, Colorifix) and Giulia Tomasello (Interaction Designer specialising in women's healthcare.) Inside the house, Biomaker Challenge teams exhibited their low-cost, open-source projects. The aim of the event was to provide inspiration for open science projects (talks and demos), showcase the tools available to pursue such projects (Biomaker Challenge), and highlight a community-access space for biology and prototyping (Biomakespace). We hope that the event will inspire and provide an avenue for artists, designers, and other non-scientists to get involved in open science. 

Photos of the event can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/synbiosri/albums/72157679436063798

Students recieve CRISPR training thanks to OpenPlant-funded project.

Thanks to the support of OpenPlant 4K fund, summer student Nandor Hegyi (University of Aberdeen) and final year undergraduate student Darius Zarrabian (University of Cambridge) received hands-on CRISPR training from Dr Gonzalo Mendoza Ochoa in the lab of Alison Smith (Cambridge).

Host species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

The OpenPlant-funded project entitled “Site-directed integration of transgenes into the nuclear genome of algae and plants using CRISPR/Cpf1/ssDNA” aimed to solve drawbacks associated with current methods for nuclear transformation, which results in random integration of transgenic DNA. The plan was to firstly develop the method for the green alga and biotech host Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and then try to adapt this specific method for land plants and compare it with similar methods being developed.

The students quickly learned that research can present unexpected challenges. Nonetheless, they remained determined to tackle the problem! Having achieved half of the tasks of the project, Nandor returned to Aberdeen to continue his degree with the thought “I wish I would have had more time to work on this interesting project”. Darius came to the rescue soon after and, with equal enthusiasm, took up where Nandor left off. He is currently in the final stage of his final year research project and is gathering data that indicate that single-stranded DNA fixes nuclease-induced DNA cuts (via homologous recombination) better than exogenous double-stranded DNA.

Darius’s words “I have really enjoyed making progress with the project and learning about CRISPR, despite the inevitable multitude of 96-well plates I have had to face!” capture both the joy and hard work of scientific research.

We thank again OpenPlant for the support and will be sharing progress in the near future.

By Dr Gonzalo Mendoza (University of Cambridge)

New OpenPlant Programme Manager at the John Innes Centre in Norwich

Hi all,

Dieuwertje van der Does, OpenPlant Programme Manager

My name is Dieuwertje van der Does and since February this year I am replacing Colette Matthewman as OpenPlant Programme Manager at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.

Previously, I obtained my PhD in the Netherlands, and worked as postdoctoral fellow at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich to study the plant immune system. Before joining OpenPlant I spent two years at the BecA-ILRI Hub in Nairobi, Kenya, where I was Programme Lead for the 2Blades Foundation to aid the implementation of biotechnological solutions to crop diseases in East Africa. I am very excited to be able to contribute to the OpenPlant mission and accelerate the adoption of synthetic biology innovations in the real world. I am looking forward to our work together!

Postnatural Botany: A creative exploration of botanical diversity, observation and communication skills

“Postnatural Botany” rules booklet, plant discovery cards, and role-playing cars for “Explorer”, “Regulator” and “Artist”. Photo: Karen Ingram

Guest post by Karen Ingram, Creative Director

Postnatural Bestiary/Botany

This past July, participants of the 2018 OpenPlant Forum went on an expedition where they discovered several new species of plants. Ok- they didn’t REALLY discover the plants, but they played a game that enacted the discovery of 18 new plants, from alpine to outback, at the conference dinner held at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (SVCA). The game, “Postnatural Botany” was inspired by Medieval Bestiaries, and the notion that explorers would describe the wildlife from their travels to people who had never seen such wildlife, as a means to share with the community.

Image courtesy of Rutgers University Honors College Instagram and Julia Buntaine.

“Postnatural Botany” has its origin as a workshop I created for 23 students in the Rutgers University Honors College and Douglass Residential College for women. The workshop took place in early 2018 and was part of a course, “Science/Art/Technology in New/York/City" taught by Julia Buntaine of the SciArt Center.

Originally dubbed “Postnatural Bestiary” and depicting a wide array of animals, I worked with Dr. Nicola Patron from the Earlham Institute to tailor the game to be plant focused, specifically for the Open Plant Forum.

The 2018 Open Plant Forum was hosted in Norwich, at the John Innes Centre. Norwich–which enjoyed great prosperity in the Middle ages–was the perfect backdrop for a game based on medieval bestiaries.

Playing the Game

Each person was assigned a role as an “explorer”, “artist”, or “regulator” and worked in teams to produce artworks of each plant according to the rules of play. Patron selected a wide variety of plant life; Venus Flytrap, Rainbow Eucalyptus, Welwitschia, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and Java Moss were all “discovered”, described with limited terminology and depicted with magic markers and imaginative minds.

Karen Ingram introducing the game to attendees of the Open Plant Forum. Photo: Nicola Patron

The “explorer” in each group was given an envelope that contained a card with the plant they had “discovered.” The card displayed a limited amount of information, including an image of the plant, the name, habitat, size, characteristics of its flower (if there was one), and information about a specific “outstanding feature” for each plant.

The “explorer” had to describe the plant they had discovered to an”artist” for visual interpretation. A “regulator” was also part of the game play, in order to ensure all parties followed the rules, of which there were many! Neither the artist nor the regulator were allowed to guess what the plant might be. The artist was not allowed to talk at all, primarily to keep them from guessing what the plant was.

Explorer Jenny Molloy gesticulates as she describes a Baobab tree to her team’s artists, Joanne Kamens and Dave Rejeski. Photo: Karen Ingram

Clockwise from bottom left: Francoise Kepes, Claudia Vickers, Steve Evans, Richard Sever, Anne Osbourn, Jim Haseloff, Peter Murray-Rust, Christina Smolke. Photo: Karen Ingram

Fun with Rules

I created a fictitious human-centric “public” that has no access to robust image catalogues and information we have via the internet, and no knowledge of the sciences. Because of these limitations, “explorers” had to use simplified terminology; leaning on familiar household objects and tools used by humans (purses, for example) and referencing the human body as a measurement unit. Professor George Lomonosoff from the John Innes Center remarked that it was a joy to describe a Rainbow Eucalyptus tree to his team’s “artists” as being “...as tall as twenty men!”

Jim Haseloff puts the final touches on his drawing. Photo: Nicola Patron

Simple explanations, gestures, analogies referencing common household objects, an abbreviated list of plant traits (stems, leaves, flowers, roots), as well as a few select domesticated plants were used in favor of scientific terminology.

The key objectives of the game were not so much to depict the plant correctly, but to work as a team: to communicate carefully on the part of the explorers, and to listen and interpret on the part of artists and regulators, and for everyone to have fun with plants.

An amazingly accurate rendering of a Sturt’s Desert Pea by Jan Lyczakowski, who exclaimed “I’ve never seen this plant before, but apparently I did a pretty well!” Photo: Nicola Patron

Open Plant Forum attendees marvel over a gallery of colorful creations. Photo: Nicola Patron

Colette Matthewman–whose winning drawings of a Jack-in-the-pulpit underwent several iterations before she was satisfied–shared her thoughts: “The OpenPlant Forum attracts a mutidisciplinary crowd, and this was a great game for breaking down barriers of language as we were all restricted to using very every-day words together with gestures to describe and understand the look of the plant – and the plants chosen looked really fantastical! As ‘an artist’ it was fascinating to see how I started to relate the explorer’s description to plants that I knew. This helped me to draw a reasonable likeness, but also limited my ability to take on board specific instructions from the explorer as they didn’t match the image in my head.”

A Note about the Postnatural

The term “Postnatural” is defined as any organism altered by humans via selective breeding or genetic engineering. In the fable of this game, the plants and organisms are newly “discovered” by humans. Through the ages, plant collectors took their findings to new places for breeding and growth in new environments, altering the genetics and epigenetics of the plants forever. This calls to question, at what point of human intervention do organisms become “postnatural”? Once an organism is known and it is integrated into our lexicon; in a Bestiary as it was in the Middle Ages, domesticated to produce products for humans, or its genome sequenced, it is part of our human narrative. Fewer and fewer botanists get to experience the thrill of discovering a new plant species. And yet, through the discoveries of modern biology, humans are experiencing a new kinship with other organisms as we learn more about common biological processes and origins of life on earth. The gameplay of “Postnatural Botany” relies on observation, communication, listening, and interpretation; tools that we can all use to examine the potential impact of this kinship.

Markers down. Randy Rettberg, Roger Castells, and Ian Small survey the final pieces as people finish their pieces. Photo: Karen Ingram

Sketches show depictions of Venus Flytrap, Corpse flower, Java moss, Jack-in-the-pulpit (the winner), and Vegetable Sheep. Photos: Nicola Patron

[Closes 13 Feb 2019] Postdoc position in engineering complex traits in plants

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Scientist to join the Laboratory of Dr Nicola Patron to work on a project to engineer plant responses to nitrogen availability. The aim of this project is to deploy genome engineering tools to introduce multiplexed targeted mutations in specific coding and non-coding regions of a group of plant genes predicted to coordinate large-scale transcriptional responses to environmental nitrogen availability. The post-holder will be based in the Patron Lab at the Earlham Institute, (Norwich Research Park, UK) and will work in collaboration with the Brady and Segal Labs (UCDavis).

Salary on appointment will be within the range £31,250 to £38,100 per annum depending on qualifications and experience. This is a fulltime post for a contract of 23 months from 1st April 2019.

http://www.earlham.ac.uk/postdoctoral-research-scientist-engineering-complex-traits-plants