The laboratory of Dr Raffaella Nativio at the UK DRI at Imperial is seeking a bright, talented, highly motivated, and ambitious postdoctoral scientist to lead one or more projects investigating basic mechanisms of epigenetic regulation and their involvement in aging and age-related neurodegeneration.
While aging is the top risk factor for neurodegeneration, the underlying mechanisms have remained unclear. The epigenetic state has been implicated in aging and lifespan of lower organisms and thus may play a pivotal role in age-related neurodegeneration. This group previously identified histone posttranslational modification changes associated with healthy aging or Alzheimer’s disease (Nativio et al., Nature Neuroscience, 2018; Nativio et al., Nature Genetics, 2020). Next, this group aim to investigate the epigenetic pathways, that by modulating environmental, metabolic and genetic risk, predispose or protect from neurodegeneration during the course of aging. Given the association of genetic risk variants with long-distance regulatory elements, such as enhancers, this group will also explore the role of genome conformation in aging and neurodegeneration.
The successful candidate will be familiar with the biology of epigenetic regulation and proficient in using genomic/epigenomic approaches (ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, CUT&RUN, CUT&Tag, HiC or HiChIP), gene editing tools (CRISPR/Cas9 or CRISPRi/CRISPRa), and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) or embryonic stem cells (ESCs) culture systems.
