Postdoctoral Researcher in Microbiology
About the job
As an enthusiastic and talented postdoctoral researcher with a strong interest in symbiosis research, you are going to work on the following project:
Detoxifying Symbiosis in Pest Insects.
Insects live in symbiosis with microorganisms where the latter serve a multitude of functions such as aiding in digestion, supplementation of essential vitamins or amino acids, or the defence against pathogens. At the Microbiology department at Radboud University, we study insect-microbe symbioses with a focus on functional characterisation of the gut microbiome. In this project, you will investigate the symbiosis between a pest insect and its gut microbiome, revealing whether microorganisms are involved in the detoxification of pesticides. We furthermore aim to elucidate microbial breakdown pathways of pesticides. This work might lead to the elucidation of targets for new pest control strategies. Besides your own experimental work, you will contribute to the supervision of a PhD candidate.
Relevant literature: van den Bosch & Welte (2017) Microb Biotechnol 10: 531-40 ; Welte et al. (2016) Environ Microbiol 18: 1379-90.
