Job date: 2015-12-09
End Date:
Company : Vrije Universiteit Brussel Country : Role : Postdoc
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), in collaboration with the Universiteit Gent (UG), is seeking candidates for a postdoctoral position in structural bioinformatics. The research project will investigate how sequence-based predictions of protein characteristics can be fully exploited on a large statistical scale to better understand their experimentally observed behavior, especially in relation to folding events, protein stability and post-translational modifications. It connects structural bioinformatics (Wim Vranken at the Structural Biology Brussels (SBB), VUB), machine learning (Tom Lenaerts at the Artificial Intelligence group (AI), VUB) and proteomics (Lennart Martens at the Computational Omics and Systems Biology Group, UG). The successful candidate will be mainly located at the (IB)2 Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels (http://ibsquare.be), an institute that brings together the science, engineering and medical faculties of VUB and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in a collaborative and open atmosphere. The focus of the (IB)2 is on interdisciplinary research, with expertise in machine learning, big data, rare diseases, oligenic disorders, network analysis, genome analysis, metagenomics and structural bioinformatics.
Research context: The interactions and function of proteins are determined by their dynamics and conformations. Proteins can adopt context-dependent and interchanging conformations, as illustrated by allosteric changes induced by binding events or by post-translational modifications. Local sequence-based interactions between amino acids have a large influence on these preferential conformations, even when long-range stabilizing interactions are present.
In this project, we investigate the influence of such local interactions on the behavior of proteins, from folded to intrinsically disordered. These analyses are possible through novel and unique tools and databases developed by our groups, such as DynaMine (http://dynamine.ibsquare.be), Start2Fold (http://start2fold.eu) and PepShell (http://compomics.github.io/projects/pepshell.html). The successful candidate will gather further relevant experimental data from public databases and literature and connect these data to results from sequence- and structure-based predictions in order to construct innovative computational approaches that can guide new experimental work in protein folding, stability and post-translational modifications.
Offer: A full time postdoctoral position for the duration of 3 years funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), pending a review after the first 6 months.
Requeriments :
- M.Sc. or higher Degree in Bioinformatics
- M.Sc. or higher Degree in Computer Science
- Master's Degree in Engineering
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