Highly motivated candidates with training in physics, physical chemistry, biophysics or bioengineering are invited to apply.
Project: Biofuel from wood and waste will be a substantial share of our future energy mix and contribute to our organic precursor resources. The hydrocarbons in these materials are tightly packed by lignin. The conversion of lignocellulose to fermentable polysaccharides is the current bottleneck. Up to now, only cellulosomes, the multi-enzyme organelles of bacteria, and certain fungi are capable of breaking down the lignocellulose complexes under ambient conditions; industrial conversion requires harsh and environmentally questionable steps.
In an ERC Advanced Grant project we use single molecule cut and paste technology to assemble large libraries of different designer cellulosomes on a chip surface and combine enzymes from different species produced by on chip in vitro expression. The ultimate goal of this project is to identify the most productive de nuovo arrangement of natural and man-made constituents, which then may be adapted for large-scale production.
The successful candidate for this open postdoc position will further expand this research towards protein modification/engineering, in vitro expression in micro-fluidics devices and long range single molecule cut & paste assembly.
The contract will initially be limited to 2 years with the possibility for further extension. Salary is in accordance with the German state regulated public service salary scale TV-L 13. The position will be available in autumn 2017 at the earliest.
Further reading:
Mapping Mechanical Force Propagation through Biomolecular Complexes Schoeler et al. Nano Lett., doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b02727
Ultrastable cellulosome-adhesion complex tightens under load Schoeler et al. Nature Communications,doi:10.1038/ncomms6635
From genes to protein mechanics on a chip Otten et al. Nature Methods, doi:10.1038/nmeth.3099
Quantifying Synergy, Thermostability, and Targeting of Cellulolytic Enzymes and Cellulosomes with Polymerization-Based Amplification Malinowska et al. Anal. Chem.; doi:10.1021/acs.analchem.5b00936
Link to PDFs:
www.biophysik.physik.uni-muenchen.de/publications/index.htmlFor further reading about cellulosomes see our partners website:
http://www.weizmann.ac.il/Biomolecular_Sciences/Bayer/
