Postdoctoral scholarship in single-cell biology and Organoids-on-a-chip
Karolinska Institute
Prof. Qiaolin Deng
Do you want to contribute to top quality medical research?
The Deng Lab: Drawing from our expertise in the fields of developmental biology and single-cell omics, we aim to answer fundamental questions about how maternal health and uterine environment are functionally affect fetal programming and offspring health. We use state-of-the-art approaches to assess transcriptomic and epigenomic profiles, as well as organoids-on-a-chip, bioinformatics and human samples to understand how placenta actively responds to maternal uterine environment and coordinate fetal metabolic organ development as well as future metabolic functions. (key lab references: Nature Medicine 2019; Cell Reports Medicine 2023; Cell Reports 2019, 2023). The overall aim is to reveal novel mechanism for future intervention with nanomedicine. The group is placed in the Biomedicum, a top modern research building with a large repertoire of researchers and access to state-of-the-art infrastructure and facilities.
Your mission
The focus of this research project is to understand how human placentas are regulated during maternal endocrine and metabolic diseases (i.e. polycystic ovary syndrome and diabetes) using single-cell RNAseq and mouse models. Together with disease derived trophoblast organoids, we aim to decipher molecular regulation of placenta development that is causative with fetal programming and offspring health. Furthermore, we aim to develop new ways to target these regulatory mechanisms to improve offspring health. Recent evidence showed parental diseases transmission to offspring. We will use biochemical and molecular biology approaches, single-cell sequencing and organoids modeling to investigate how such epigenetic inheritance is regulated. The outcome of the postdoctoral work will inspire a new strategy to target fetal programming.
The project is a combination of practical laboratory work (wet-lab work) and preferably computational analysis (programming in R and/or Python). The program also includes supervision of students and attendance to seminars and conferences. The postdoc will plan and execute experiments, analyze data, interpret, and present the results as well as write scientific articles, initially under partial supervision but with greater independence going forward.
Please apply via the following link containing a full description of the position: https://ki.varbi.com/what:job/jobID:654000/