Research Associate in Microbiome Engineering for Bioremediation

Job reference: SAE-029095
Salary: £37,174 to £45,413 per annum dependent on relevant experience
Faculty/Organisational Unit: Science and Engineering
Location: Manchester Institute of Biotechnology
Employment type: Fixed Term
Division/Team: Department of Chemistry
Hours Per Week: Full Time (1 FTE)
Closing date (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/07/2025
Contract Duration: 36 months
School/Directorate: School of Natural Sciences

BACKGROUND

Working within Manchester Institute of Biotechnology under the supervision of Professors Neil Dixon and Michael Brockhurst, the post is funded by the BBSRC project “How does plasmid-chromosome crosstalk influence the spread of genes through complex microbial communities? This project is in collaboration with Professor Jacob Malone (Project-PI) at the John Innes Institute and Dr Jamie Hall at Liverpool University. In this project we are interrogating how plasmid-chromosome crosstalk (PCC) impacts plasmid-mediated horizontal gene transfer (HGT) efficiency of in situ engineering of a soil microbiome with a synthetic bioremediation operon.

Harnessing in situ microbial communities to clean-up polluted natural environments is a potentially efficient means of bioremediation, but often the necessary genes to breakdown pollutants are missing. Genetic bioaugmentation, whereby the required genes are delivered to resident bacteria via horizontal gene transfer, offers a promising solution to this problem (https://doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.70071). Naturally, plasmid-mediated HGT drives evolutionary innovation by enabling bacteria to gain new functions, plasmids also naturally encode a diverse array of regulators that have evolved expressly to manipulate expression of host traits for the plasmid’s benefit, via a process known as PCC. Such PCCs can drive plasmid spread through microbiomes even in the absence of direct selection for plasmid-encoded traits, potentially allowing valuable functions to be efficiently engineered into native microbiomes in situ. In this project, we will determine how PCC regulators affect the efficiency of in situ engineering of a soil microbiome with a synthetic operon for the bioremediation of industry pollutants.

Overall Purpose of the Job

You will be responsible for conducting research under the supervision of Profs Dixon and Brockhurst to engineer the microbial communities from soil to enable in situ bioremediation of industry pollutants. You will be responsible for the design, construction and deployment of engineered plasmids to support the delivery of beneficial traits, via HGT, through soil microbiome communities. You will work closely with other postdocs on this project, who will be applying complimentary approaches to the same systems (including bioinformatic mining and in vitro characterisation of new PCC regulators.

Interviews for this role will take place w/c 18th of August.

Enquiries about the vacancy, shortlisting and interviews:

Name: Professor Neil Dixon

Email: neil.dixon@manchester.ac.uk

General enquiries:

Email: People.recruitment@manchester.ac.uk

Technical support:

https://jobseekersupport.jobtrain.co.uk/support/home

This vacancy will close for applications at midnight on the closing date.

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