Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate position, funded by the Royal Society, for up to 30 months to work with Dr Jon Agirre in the Department of Chemistry. The successful applicant will join a vibrant team of researchers at the heart of the world-leading York Structural Biology Laboratory (YSBL). The work of the laboratory over the years has included the delivery of world-leading methods and experimental discoveries, training and nurturing hundreds of outstanding scientists in the process.

Role
The AlphaFold software for protein model prediction has revolutionised workflows in structural biology. However, while high-accuracy models are now available for most human proteins of medical relevance, up to 50% of those proteins are expected to be glycosylated – a modification whose structure AlphaFold does not predict. Protein glycosylation is greatly important, with implications for protein folding and molecular recognition including, as evidenced by the spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2, viral infection. In collaboration with other scientists, we have extended the Privateer software to interactively build missing glycosylation onto precalculated AlphaFold models. In parallel, we have developed analyses that allow us to get a clear picture of glycans and their interactions, including H-bonds and XH-Pi interactions. We expect that these methods will enable us to, based on existing glycobiological knowledge, extend the Privateer software to automatically complete AlphaFold models with crucial missing glycosylation components.