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ABOUT THE ROLE

The Sheppard Lab, within the Department of Infectious Disease, is excited to invite a highly motivated and technically skilled postdoctoral researcher to join our team. In this role, you will be at the cutting edge of host-pathogen interaction research, investigating how host proteins influence influenza virus infection.
This MRC-funded position offers the opportunity to dive deep into the structure-function characterisation of critical host-virus interactions that regulate the influenza RNA polymerase, shaping the intricate processes of viral transcription and genome replication. You will contribute to a transformative project aiming to uncover key proviral and restriction factors, decipher their molecular mechanisms and ultimately harness this knowledge to inform the design of next-generation antiviral strategies.

WHAT YOU WOULD BE DOING

In this dynamic project, you will employ a pioneering proximity proteomics approach to map the full repertoire of host proteins interacting with the influenza RNA polymerase. This innovative work will be carried out in close collaboration with our partners at King’s College London, bringing together complementary strengths in virology and proteomics within a forward-thinking framework.
You will lead the development and optimisation of a systematic workflow to identify, validate, and conduct a bioinformatic analyses of host factors that regulate polymerase function across diverse influenza subtypes. The ultimate goal is to dissect the molecular mechanisms by which key host proteins modulate viral transcription and genome replication. To achieve this, you will employ a powerful multidisciplinary toolkit - including gene editing, functional and binding reporter assays, viral growth kinetics and cross-linking mass spectrometry (XL-MS).
Your detailed structure-function characterisation of the most influential virulence factors will feed directly into translational efforts within the lab and in collaboration with the Barclay lab, aimed at exploiting our deep mechanistic understanding of host-virus interactions for the rational development of novel antiviral therapeutics.