Postdoc on computational (meta)genomic analysis

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Testo originale dell'annuncio (in inglese)

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges for global food security, requiring new approaches to understand and harness the natural diversity that enables plants and their associated microbiomes to adapt to environmental change. Ancient environmental DNA (eDNA) provides a unique record of past ecosystems, preserving genetic traces of microorganisms and plants that interacted with crops and their wild relatives over thousands of years. In this project, you will develop and apply computational omics approaches to uncover the molecular mechanisms underlying ancient plant–microbiome interactions, with a particular focus on biosynthetic gene clusters and other functional genes involved in chemical communication, defence, and adaptation. You will analyse large-scale ancient metagenomic datasets to identify and characterize microbial and plant-derived biosynthetic pathways, predict their ecological functions, and reconstruct the (co-)evolutionary dynamics of traits such as microbiome recruitment, metabolite-mediated interactions, pathogenicity and disease resistance. This will involve using and further adapting state-of-the-art genome mining approaches, including biosynthetic gene cluster identification, gene cluster family classification, and functional prediction, to work with highly fragmented and complex eDNA datasets. This project is part of the larger European AEGIS consortium, bringing together expertise in ancient DNA, plant science, microbiome research, computational biology, and crop improvement. You will work closely with researchers across the consortium to translate computational predictions into biological insights and identify ancient genetic traits that may contribute to future climate-resilient agriculture. Within Wageningen University, you will be embedded in the Bioinformatics chair group and collaborate with researchers developing innovative approaches for microbiome and genome mining. The research is expected to deliver fundamental insights into the evolutionary history of plant–microbiome interactions, novel computational strategies for analysing ancient omics data, and candidate genes and pathways that can ultimately support the development of more resilient crops. Your duties and responsibilities include: computational (meta)genome mining and quantitative data analysis of biosynthetic and catabolic genes and clusters, pathogenicity genes and other functional genes relevant for host-microbe interactions across ancient DNA samples; biological interpretation of the data to elucidate evolution of plant-microbiome interactions and metabolites involved therein; development or improvement of existing or new algorithms or computational strategies; collaboration with international partners. Your team You will work within the Bioinformatics chair group at Wageningen University, in the team of Marnix Medema. The expertise of the Medema research group within the Bioinformatics chair group lies in developing and applying computational approaches to identify metabolic pathways and connect them to specific molecules and phenotypes. You will work here Wageningen UR has a global reputation for its ground-breaking research and innovative education in the fields of food and health, sustainable agrosystems, the rural environment, and societal development - all of which make an essential contribution to the quality of life, i.e. the supply of safe and healthy food and drink, on the one hand, and the chance to live, work and play in a balanced ecosystem with a large variety of plants and animals on the other. Within Wageningen UR, the Plant Sciences Group (PSG) brings together science education and scientific, strategic and applied research in the fields of biology, of plants in relation to their environment, of plant-related organisms and of plant production. This project will be carried out at the Bioinformatics Group within PSG. This research group focuses on fundamental and applied bioinformatics research in the green lif