Postdoctoral position available in the Frank lab at the University of California Merced.
The Frank lab is recruiting an exceptional and highly motivated postdoc to work on diversity and function of the conifer foliage microbiome. The successful candidate will contribute to ongoing research that seeks to understand the diversity, function, and transmission routes of the microbiome associated with foliage of western high elevation conifers. The specific research focus involves characterizing the taxa responsible for nitrogen fixation in conifer foliage. Recent findings suggest that both evergreen and deciduous trees have the potential to directly access atmospheric N via N2-fixing bacteria in the foliage. These findings are important to our understanding of how plants in N-limited ecosystems meet their N demand, and to balancing ecosystem N budgets. Illumina sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene has shown that the conifer microbiome is largely consistent across species and geographic sites, with several potential N2-fixing uncultured taxa dominating the community. The successful candidate will use a combination of enrichment of bacterial cells and DNA; metagenomics and single cell genome (SAG) sequencing; amplification of nitrogenase (nif) genes using PNA PCR blockers to exclude conifer nif homologs; designing and using nif primers for specific groups of bacteria; and bioinformatics analysis of metagenomes and SAGs. Metagenome- and SAG sequencing is performed in collaboration with Tanya Woyke’s group at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, CA. There are also opportunities for collaborating with Jennifer Pett-Ridge’s group at Lawrence Livermore National Lab for fluorescence in situ hybridization. The project involves sampling lodgepole pine in nearby Yosemite National Park. Applicants should have a PhD, completed or completion imminent, in microbiology, evolution, genomics, bioinformatics, or related fields. Programming and bioinformatics experience is desirable. This position begins in January and is funded for 12 months with the possibility of extension for a total of 2 years. Salary is based on the University of California Academic Salary Scales. Prospective applicants should contact Carolin Frank at cfra...@ucmcerced.edu to discuss the project. The University of California, Merced is a dynamic new university campus in Merced, California, which opened in September 2005 as the tenth campus of the University of California and the first American research university in the 21st century. The campus is centrally located with easy access to the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite National Park, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the California coastline. U.C. Merced is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer with a strong institutional commitment to the achievement of diversity among its faculty, staff and students.
