Research Associate in Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology

at  The University of Manchester

Working within Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences) under the supervision of Professor Sophie Nixon, the post is funded by the BBSRC strategic Longer and Larger grant “Rules of life in CO2-driven microbial communities: Microbiome engineering for a Net Zero future”.
This project is led by Professor Sophie Nixon at the University of Manchester, in collaboration with the Earlham Institute. In this project we are interrogating the rules that govern microbiomes that inhabit terrestrial hot springs.
The long-held tradition of studying microorganisms in isolation has, until recently, obscured the fact that microbial life exists as interdependent multi-species assemblages. Despite the profound impact microbial communities have on their environment and the technological advances in microbial genomics in recent years, the rules that govern the structure, function and stability of microbial communities are complex and only partially understood. Although a plethora of mechanisms that influence microbial communities have been identified, from metabolic priming, to inter- and intraspecific metabolic signalling and even direct antibiosis, holistic understanding has yet to be achieved in any microbial system. In this project we will develop a novel experimental system that is complex yet tractable, enabling rich, coordinated multi-omics analysis coupled with computational modelling to deliver deep mechanistic insight. We will apply a cutting-edge toolbox of experimental, analytical, and computational approaches to reveal the rules of life in this system that will serve as a blueprint to apply to any microbiome.
You will be responsible for conducting research under the supervision of Prof Nixon to establish and characterise the microbial communities from hot springs that successfully grow on CO2 and H2 in laboratory-controlled experiments. You will be responsible for generating, analysing and coordinating the publication of results from amplicon, metagenomic and metatranscriptomic sequencing data. These data will be generated from field samples, batch cultivation experiments and continuous cultivation studies using flow through bioreactors. You will work closely with other postdocs and PhD students in this project, who will be applying complementary approaches (including proteomics and metabolomics, as well as multi-species computational modelling), and will be expected to join at least one fieldtrip to Iceland with other sLoLa team members. Your experimental and analytical work will be supported by a full-time technical specialist.

Please refer the Job description for details