Postdoctoral Research Associate in Molecular Plant Science

**Postdoctoral Research Associate in Molecular Plant Science** **(**Job Number**:24002349**)**

Department of Biosciences

Grade 7: - £37,999 - £45,163 per annum

Fixed Term - Full Time

**Contract Duration**: 24 Months

**Contracted Hours per Week**: 35

**Closing Date**: 07-Feb-2025, 5:59:00 PM

**Disclosure and Barring Service Requirement**: Not Applicable.

**Working at Durham University**

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**The Role and Department**

As part of this people-driven focus, the department welcomes applicants interested in hybrid working to give staff who can work flexibly and on and off campus.

**The Role**

The Durham Bioscience Dept is seeking to appoint a motivated and skilled Postdoctoral Researcher in molecular plant science to investigate the biophysics of marine (macroalgal) cell wall polymers under physiological and stress conditions. This is a highly interdisciplinary project, funded under the UKRI Cross Council Responsive Mode Scheme, that aims to uncover the mechanical properties of cell walls in marine macroalgae. The bulk of our understanding of cell walls comes from studies in land plants, but macroalgal cell walls have evolved to deal with rapid and extreme cyclic changes in salinity and hydrostatic pressure and offer novel and under-explored insights into the fundamental architecture and evolution of cell walls and marine-adapted biopolymers. These insights require interdisciplinary expertise and the project will run across the cross-disciplinary LILACS consortium (‘Looking Inside Living Algal Cell Walls - A Soft Matter Approach’), in which Durham researchers work closely with synthetic chemists at Imperial College London and rheologists at Liverpool University.

The successful applicant will begin by using proteomic and transcriptomic approaches to characterize novel macroalgal cell wall proteins and polymers in the green macroalga, _Ulva compressa_, which is being developed as a model marine species by Durham’s project lead (John Bothwell), along with colleagues in Gent, Belgium. You will play a central role in leading, devising and conducting original experiments that bring together your molecular plant science expertise with researchers in biophysics, rheology and optical microscopy to design and construct innovative optical microscopy setups that probe how model hydrogels, constructed from the algal biopolymers and components that you have identified, respond to changing environments in real time. Experience with proteomic techniques is therefore essential, and expertise in cell wall polymer extraction, analytical chemistry techniques, or optical microscopy techniques would also be an advantage.

You will be working across traditional disciplines with biologists, chemists, optical and soft matter physicists, and your findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed manuscripts and conference presentations in several disciplines. We value and nurture mentorship, leadership development and collaboration, and you will have the opportunity to contribute to the guidance and supervision of postgraduate and undergraduate research projects. Additionally, there is potential for collaboration with industrial partners to further enhance the scope and impact of your research.

**Key responsibilities**:
You will be primarily responsible for the extraction and characterization of green macroalgal cell wall proteins and polymers using proteomic and other analytical techniques. Using these, you will also design and construct model composite hydrogels, working