Postdoctoral Researcher for Molecular Mechanisms of Motor Neurodegeneration

Are you a scientist with a PhD degree or close to obtaining a PhD degree in neurobiology or a related field, and interested in a scientific career? Are you passionate about science and a critical and creative thinker? Are you interested in exploring the molecular mechanisms underlying motor neurodegenerative disease and perform cutting-edge biomedical research? Then you have a part to play as a postdoctoral researcher!

We are recruiting an ERC-funded postdoctoral researcher who will work independently on Drosophila genetics projects. Your main project will use reverse genetic approaches to model familial forms of motor neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases in Drosophila. You will evaluate the disease-relevance of the obtained knock-in Drosophila models by behavioural analysis, immunohistochemistry (IHC), confocal imaging and in vivo noncanonical amino acid tagging (NCAT) approaches. Finally, for valid disease models, you will dissect the underlying molecular mechanisms of disease using Drosophila genetic approaches complemented with behavioural analysis, IHC, FISH, imaging, molecular biology, biochemistry, and next-generation sequencing. In addition, you will have the opportunity to contribute to other ongoing projects in the lab, for example by studying the molecular pathogenesis of CMT peripheral neuropathy associated with mutations in tRNA synthetases, following up on our recently published work (Zuko, Mallik et al, Science, 2021), or characterising genes identified in a forward genetic screen for genes required for maintenance of peripheral motor and sensory axons (unpublished). You will have the opportunity to collaborate with and supervise Master's students, and in the longer run also PhD candidates. You will get some exposure to teaching in Master's courses. Eventually, the development of an independent research project that can be transferred to a future position is possible and highly encouraged.