Job Centre for Liver, Digestive and Metabolic Diseases - Postdoc Position Systems Biology of African trypanosomes (SilicoTryp)

Based on the information generated by the experimental partners, the postdoc will build a computational model that will integrate redox and energy metabolism with signal transduction and gene expression. The postdoc will collaborate with other theoreticians as well as with experimental partners. Research visits to partner labs will be part of the project. Furthermore, the postdoc will collaborate with colleagues in SBC-EMA, sharing Systems Biology expertise to understand the regulation of metabolism in various organisms.

We are searching for an excellent, highly motivated postdoc, with expertise in computational modelling of biochemical and/or gene-expression networks. The postdoc is expected to communicate efficiently with experimentalists, mostly located abroad (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heidelberg).

The UMCG has a preventive Hepatitis B policy. This means that you must have built up sufficient protection against Hepatitis B before you can be appointed.

- The University Medical Centre Groningen offers salary scale 10/11 gross per month depending on experience.
- The position will be for three years.
- The conditions of employment comply with the Collective Labour Agreement for Medical Centres (CAO-UMC).

The University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG) offers an excellent environment for research and training of scientific skills. Together with the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Groningen, the UMCG has recently established a new Systems Biology Centre for Energy Metabolism and Ageing (SBS-EMA). The Systems Biology group headed by Dr. B.M. Bakker is part of the Centre for Liver, Digestive and Metabolic Diseases. Project description The SysMO-funded SilicoTryp project aims at developing a computational model of Trypanosoma brucei, the causative agent of African sleeping sickness, by combining cutting edge post-genomic technologies and advanced statistical, mathematical and bioinformatics approaches. The work is carried out in a close collaboration of several European research universities. The consortium consists of modellers, statisticians, biochemists and molecular cell biologists. Trypanosomes, blood-borne parasites transmitted by tsetse flies, are the causal agent of African sleeping sickness, a deadly disease for humans and cattle. A systems biology study of trypanosomes is particularly timely and has the potential to provide critical insights to the fundamental mechanisms controlling this parasite. Indeed, due to some of the trypanosome's unique biological characteristics and the wealth of information obtained in biomedical studies, this organism is particularly suited to a systems biological approach. Computational models of glucose metabolism as well as of the unusual gene-expression cascade of the organism have provided insight into the regulation of its physiology. The next step, which the SilicoTryp consortium will take, is to link glucose metabolism to the redox - trypanothione pathway and oxidative stress, as well as to signalling and gene expression. See also: Parasitology (2010) 137, 1333-41.

Dr. Barbara Bakker
(050) 361 15 42
Centre for Liver, Digestive and Metabolic Diseases