Research Associate - Specialism in Wetlab with Potential Bioinformatics Experience

Job description:

Working Pattern: (applicable if fractional, specify days if a business requirement) 35 hours, with flexibility determined by experiments

Do you have a passion for immunology, RNA and gene regulation? We have an exciting opportunity for a Postdoctoral Research Associate to join an ambitious, interdisciplinary programme investigating how RNA regulation controls innate immune responses during inflammation.

You'll hold a PhD in molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, bioinformatics with wet-lab experience, or a related discipline, with a keen interest in RNA biology, innate immunity or in vivo modelling. You're motivated to design and perform complex experimental work, including high-throughput RNA-focused experiments, and comfortable analysing your own results. Above all, you're collaborative, curious, and keen to acquire new skills as part of a research community working towards shared goals.

You'll join a multidisciplinary team combining primary human neutrophil culture and zebrafish models with the latest molecular biology, genomics, bioinformatics and in vivo imaging to investigate how ELAVL1 — a major RNA-binding protein — impacts neutrophil biology. Together, we'll uncover the fundamental principles of immune regulation by post-transcriptional regulation, with real relevance to inflammatory and infectious disease.

Day to day, you'll culture and manipulate primary human neutrophils and related cellular models, and design and run high-throughput -omics experiments including RNA-seq, eCLIP, SLAM-seq and RIP-seq. You'll investigate mechanisms such as intron retention, mRNA stability, RNA editing, methylation and phosphorylation, and develop approaches including CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing and RNA affinity pull-down assays. You'll also undertake in vivo studies using zebrafish models, including inflammation and infection assays, live imaging and functional analysis of genetic mutants. For the right candidate, there's scope to generate and interpret large-scale multi-omics datasets, and to use computational tools to identify biologically relevant pathways.

This is an exceptional opportunity to work at the forefront of RNA biology and immunology, access world-class facilities, contribute to high-impact discoveries, and develop an independent research profile within a collaborative, supportive environment.

The University of Sheffield is a remarkable place to work. Our people are at the heart of everything we do. Their diverse backgrounds, abilities and beliefs make Sheffield a world-class university.

We offer a fantastic range of benefits including a highly competitive annual leave entitlement (with the ability to purchase more), a generous pensions scheme, flexible working opportunities, a commitment to your development and wellbeing, a wide range of retail discounts, and much more.

Find out more at sheffield.ac.uk/jobs/benefits and join us to become part of something special.

We are committed to exploring flexible working opportunities which benefit the individual and the University.

Even if your past experience doesn't match perfectly with every criterion, your contribution could still be valuable — we encourage you to apply and to reference the person specification in your application statement.

We build teams of people from different heritages and lifestyles from across the world, whose talent and contributions complement each other to greatest effect. We believe diversity in all its forms delivers greater impact through research, teaching and student experience.

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