[CEPCEB_All] FW: 2 postdoc positions available exploring biodiversity in root biology

[IIGBadmin]

From: Julia Bailey-Serres <serres at ucr.edu>
Sent: Friday, November 3, 2023 2:39 AM
To: IIGBadmin <iigbadmin at ucr.edu>
Cc: Nikki Van De Klundert <nikki.vandeklundert at ucr.edu>
Subject: Fwd: 2 postdoc positions available exploring biodiversity in root biology

Hi team,

Can this position opportunity be shared with postdocs and grad students of IIGB?

Thank you,

Juila




Dear Colleagues,

I have recently received news that I will receive funding from the Templeton foundation on an exciting new endeavor (see Executive summary below).  I am reaching out to you in hopes that you may be able to forward this message to any PhD student you know who is looking for a postdoc and potentially interested in using biodiverse species to understand mechanisms of plant development and environmental adaptation.

I aim to recruit two new postdocs focused on the following goals: 1) To curate a collection of model systems across flowering plants that can be used by the community to address the physiological and molecular-genetic mechanisms associated with climate change and 2) To utilize gene editing approaches in the Brassicaceae family to explore how genomic context influences the expression of gene functions in a species.

Candidates that have experience in comparative plant biology or systematics, together with the use of molecular genetic approaches, are most encouraged to apply.  Anyone with an interest should reach out to me directly (dinneny at stanford.edu<mailto:dinneny at stanford.edu>).  We are a very diverse and welcoming lab group and our lab values can be found here<https://dinnenylab.me/dinneny-lab-values/>.  Thanks for your help!

Best wishes,
José
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
José R. Dinneny | Professor of Biology, Stanford University | Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator | Gilbert Building, Rm 228B, 371 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305 | Tel. 650-724-2366 | https://dinnenylab.me<https://dinnenylab.me/> | @Dinnenylab | Admin. assistant: Divya Gala, hdgala at stanford.edu<mailto:hdgala at stanford.edu>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Executive summary of project:
Despite the diverse array of habitats that plants thrive in, mechanistic insight into the physiological processes and molecular mechanisms that ensure climate resilience have only been characterized in a small number of model plant species and crops. This is particularly evident when considering root systems, which provide many important sustainability-related functions to the plant necessary for growth under water or nutrient limiting conditions. Nevertheless, the increasing availability of complete genome sequences for a wide swath of plant species highlights the opportunities that exist to functionalize our ‘omics level understanding of plant biodiversity. I propose to the John Templeton Foundation to functionalize biodiversity in plants through a combination of species curation, phenomics, gene editing and comparative genomics. We will establish a database of model plants with sequenced genomes that curates the ease of cultivation under standard laboratory conditions and presents an anatomical atlas of root tips for comparative studies. We will pioneer the use of CRISPR/Cas9 as a tool for comparative developmental genetics, to understand the conserved and divergent functions of genes critical for establishing anatomical complexity in roots. These wet-bench approaches will be complemented with comparative genomics approaches that identify gene families associated with global species distributions. This functional atlas of biodiversity will provide great insight into the inner beauty of plants, establish essential community resources that facilitate the broader study of biodiverse species, informthe improvement of a larger diversity of crop plants, and inspire the preservation and continued study of the most important kingdom of life for human existence.

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