Organisation/Company CNRS Department Laboratoire des Interactions Plantes Microbes Environnement Research Field Biological sciences Environmental science Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Country France Application Deadline 29 Nov 2024 - 23:59 (UTC) Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 35 Offer Starting Date 1 Apr 2025 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Horizon 2020 Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No
Offer Description Infectious disease is often the major selective agent in nature, and we cannot understand how natural populations evolve without understanding their pathogenic microbes. Beyond host immunity and abiotic factors, an important factor determining the ability of pathogens to invade and proliferate in a host is the resident microbiota. However, we are only beginning to glimpse its diverse impacts. We know even less about interactions among pathogenic microbes themselves. Any effort to explain how pathogen communities, or pathobiota, develop within a host requires knowledge of how pathogens interact with other pathogens and how pathogen-pathogen interactions are affected by host microbiota, host genetics, and the abiotic environment. In the PATHOCOM project (https://figshare.com/articles/preprint/PATHOCOM_proposal/13174337 ), we aim to set up a program that integrates large-scale field observations of microbiota/pathobiota in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana with ultra-high-throughput experimental tests of host-dependent interactions among microbes, allowing predicting stable pathogen-pathogen-microbiota interactions by modeling. In this context, this postdoctoral project is part of the third step of the PATHOCOM project, which aims to test, among others, the effect of the microbiota genetics on pairwise interactions between 18 bacterial pathogenic strains (9 strains of the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae and 9 strains of the bacterial pathogen Xanthomonas campestris). To achieve these goals, the recruited post-doc will (i) set up large GWAS in in vitro conditions, and (ii) functionally validate several QTLs using last-generation tools of bacterial genome editing. The recruited post-doc will work with a panel of 200 commensal bacterial species and 74 strains of the commensal bacteria Pseudomonas siliginis, which have all been whole-genome sequenced using long-read sequencing technology and isolated from natural populations of A. thaliana. The recruited post-doc will benefit from tools allowing high-throughput phenotyping (pipetting robots, barcoded pathogenic strains, barcoded P. siliginis strains, barcoded plant lines, and high-throughput imaging of vegetative growth…). This 24-month postdoctoral project (with an extension of 12 months) is funded by the ERC (European Research Council) and will be carried out as part of an interdisciplinary and collaborative project with the research groups of Detlef Weigel (Max Planck Institute, Tübingen, Germany) and Joy Bergelson (New York University, USA).
The postdoc will be in charge of setting up GWA mapping experiments to test the effect of 200 commensal bacterial species and 74 P. siliginis strains on the pairwise interactions between 18 pathogenic strains under in vitro conditions. The post-doc will also be in charge of functionally validating several QTLs using last-generation tools of bacterial genome editing. To achieve these goals, the post-doc will be able to rely on a collective of several people working on tasks close to those mentioned for this profile (e.g. engineer, assistant engineer, and technician).
Applicants should have excellent skills in (i) microbiology, (ii) quantitative genetics, (iii) experimental designs for experiments with thousands of plants, and (iv) statistical analysis of large phenotypic data sets. Skills in molecular biology to functionally validate candidate genes underlying bacterial QTLs will be a plus. Fluent English is required.
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