We are seeking to appoint two outstanding individuals with PhD training in structural biology to reveal the structure and function of unconventional kinetochore proteins.

We are also looking for one research assistant who is eager to learn new techniques and help to run our group. This 4-year position comes with an optional opportunity to obtain a PhD.

For details, please refer to the following adverts.

– Postdoc positions: https://elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX_1001/job/8367 (application deadline: 25 September 2023)

– Research Assistant position: https://elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX_1001/job/8448 (deadline: 9 October 2023)

Our group aims to discover fundamental principles and requirements governing chromosome segregation machines in eukaryotes. Although it was widely believed that all eukaryotes would have a conserved set of kinetochore proteins, we identified more than
20 uncharacterized kinetochore proteins (named KKT1–25) in Trypanosoma brucei (causative agent of African sleeping sickness) and discovered that they constitute unconventional kinetochores specific to kinetoplastids, a group of evolutionarily-divergent
eukaryotes (Akiyoshi and Gull, Cell 2014, Marcianò et al, Journal of Cell Biology 2021, Tromer et al., Open Biology 2021, Ludzia et al., Structure 2021). We are currently characterizing these KKT proteins using various techniques including cell biology, bioinformatics,
super-resolution microscopy, biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology (X-ray crystallography, NMR, electron tomography, and cryoEM/ET).

Please let me know if you have any query.

Best wishes,

Bungo