Research Assistant/Associate in Bioinformatics University of Bristol - Medical and Veterinary Sciences Faculty Office Location: Bristol Salary: £31,342 to £39,685 Per annum Hours: Full Time Contract Type: Contract / Temporary Placed on: 9th June 2015 Closes: 28th June 2015 Job Ref: ACAD101466 ★ View Employer Profile
School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine
£31,342 - £35,256 pro rata per annum (Grade I) £35,256 - £39,685 pro rata per annum (Grade J)
This post results from a short-term award to Dr. Ariel Blocker (Schools of Cellular Medicine & Biochemistry) and Prof. Julian Gough (Department of Computer Science) entitled: “Rational vaccine design: can one identify protective antigens systematically in silico? A pilot study focusing on epitope design for Shigella and Salmonella vaccines.” We will join up two separate branches of Immunology: our understanding of the effect of immune pressure in the host on pathogen evolution and our understanding of what suitably antigenic T cell and B cell epitopes consist of. By adapting existing computational vaccinology workflows, we will test if we can use localised, moderate variability in surface or secreted antigens as a means to identify protective antigen epitopes in silico. We will do this first in Salmonella using published information to validate our findings experimentally. If successful, we will apply our novel method to the related enteric bacterial pathogen Shigella, for which vaccine design is much less advanced.
The main task of the appointee will be implementation of the Bioinformatics aspect of the work, ie batch use of pre-existing programmes assessing protein secretion and surface presentation, within a purpose designed workflow & GUI system and the design & addition to this workflow of a programme to analyse sets of protein sequences for overall conservation versus localised sequence variation. Next, the individual will test and add to the workflow existing T and B cell epitope prediction programmes. Finally, they will statistically validate of our findings against experimental ones.
The appointee will be hosted by the Computational Intelligence group within the Intelligent Systems Laboratory (the ISL), within the new Life Sciences Building of the University of Bristol.
The appointee should have a background in bioinformatics and statistics. She or he should be capable of developing novel methodology in addition to having a keen interdisciplinary interest in the given medical application domain. In addition to being highly motivated, you must hold a PhD (ideally in Bioinformatics), have mathematical and computational ability, including programming (e.g. Python, C++, R, MATLAB), and have at a publication list that demonstrates your ability to write papers.
For any informal or formal enquiries please contact Prof. Julian Gough: http://bioinformatics.bris.ac.uk/people/julian_gough.php or Dr. Ariel Blocker http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cellmolmed/research/infect-immune/blocker.html
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