Postdoctoral Research Associate

　　Imperial College London

　　A Research Associate position is available to join the laboratory of Professor Gloria Rudenko in the Department of Life Sciences based at the South Kensington Campus of Imperial College London.

　　The research programme investigates the molecular biology of African trypanosomes, particularly with regards to the epigenetic control of gene expression. Trypanosomes provide an experimentally amenable system for investigating transcriptional control in an early branching eukaryote. Trypanosomes are single-celled eukaryotes which are protected by a dense Variant Surface Glycoprotein (VSG) coat. Each trypanosome encodes hundreds of VSG coats, but only one VSG gene is transcribed at a time. The active VSG is located in one of about 15 telomeric VSG expression site transcription units. Trypanosomes can continuously switch between transcription of different VSG expression sites.

　　We would like to understand how this singular expression of one VSG gene at a time is controlled. How are VSG expression sites turned on and off, and how is their mono-allelic expression controlled? We would like to investigate the role of epigenetic mechanisms. These include chromatin structure, epigenetic marks and nuclear positioning. Expression sites are always telomeric. What is the role of genomic architecture? Hopefully the candidate will help us answer these questions and elucidate how these variant surface genes are controlled. Additional information about our research programme is available on our lab website: