Research and graduate education at the department of chemistry and molecular biology comprises a wide scientific field from the atomic and molecular levels all the way through the molecular level and cells to intact organisms. Much of the phenomena studied here impact on our natural environment and living systems. We participate in undergraduate programs in chemistry, molecular biology, medicinal chemistry, biology, marine sciences, and pharmacy.
A third cycle education at our department will lead to a Ph.D. in Natural sciences, natural sciences with a specialisation in Chemistry or natural sciences with a specialisation in biology. Ph.D studies comprises four years at the post graduate level. The time period can be extended to 5 years in total through teaching and/or other departmental duties.

Developing the toolbox of NMR methods for studying challenging problems of modern Structural Biology
NMR is a rapidly developing biophysical tool to study biological phenomena at atomic level. Our group at the Department of Chemistry and Molecular Biology and the Swedish NMR Centre is the forefront of developing new NMR experiments, signal processing algorithms, automation of data analysis, as well as methods for cell-free protein synthesis. The new methodology is immediately applied and tested in our studies of structure and dynamics of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins, large proteins, and in collaboration projects that we have with many groups in Sweden and worldwide.

The Department of Chemistry and Molecular Biology and Swedish NMR Centre offers an international and enthusiastic working environment with excellent infrastructure for studies in all areas of life science. Our facilities for structural biology include state-of-the-art 600-900 MHz Agilent and Bruker NMR spectrometers, access to national super-computer infrastructure, as well as a fully equipped biochemistry laboratory for expression, purification, and biophysical characterization.

Job assignments

Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDPs), whose mere existence was questioned only ten years ago, constitute up to 30% of the human proteome, play key roles in most of the cell signalling processes, and are often implicated in many maladies including cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. IDPs lack well defined structure, are often involved in promiscuous binding to multiple partners, defy the broadly accepted structure-function paradigm and, thus, pose new conceptual and methodological challenges for molecular structural biology. The PhD student will be involved in developing an efficient NMR-centered platform for IDP studies. In order to address inherent deficiencies of traditional NMR spectroscopy in resolution and sensitivity when dealing with IDPs, we will introduce new types of NMR experiments and design novel schemes of data collection and signal processing. The platform will be developed, tested, and fine-tuned in our study of key initial events of cell signalling in the B-cell receptor. We will elucidate, at the atomic level, the unknown mechanism that translates ligand binding at the immunoglobulin part of the receptor into phosphorylation of its intrinsically disordered cytosolic domains. The outcome of the project, funded by the Swedish Research Council, will have large impact in immunology and will be instrumental for rational drug design and finding new treatments for many of the important human diseases associated with IDPs.

The PhD student will be exposed to a broad range of scientific tasks and research questions that require a genuine interest in and knowledge of structural biology, biophysics, signal processing, molecular modeling, as well as novel methods of protein expression and purification.

Eligibility
The qualifications for education on a doctoral level are: degree in advanced level, at least 240 university points, of which 60 are on an advanced level, or in an other way acquired similar knowledge.

Assessment

Regulations for the evaluation of qualifications for education on a doctoral level are given in SFS 1998:80.

We seek a talented and dedicated student eager to pursue a career in Structural biology and biophysics. You should be open-minded, eager to learn and have a genuine interest in Science. You should be able to work independently and in a team and communicate well in English. The ideal candidate has an educational and practical background in physics, structural biology, computational mathematics, biophysical methods of protein characterisation, protein expression and purification.

Further Information
http://www.gu.se/english/about_the_university/announcements-in-the-job-application-portal/?languageId=0&disableRedirect=true&id=19144&Dnr=746486&Type=E
Application Deadline : 29 February 2016