Postdoc Research Fellow in Bioinformatics Botany Plant Pathology
A highly skilled postdoctoral researcher is sought to support a DAFM funded project entitled Detect PNP: Detecting plant nursery pathogens using HTS technology. The project aims to provide methods for the detection of pathogens in plant nurseries using high-throughput DNA sequencing HTS technologies.
We will sample wastewater growing media and plant material from nursery botanic garden and research environments and develop the HTS pipelines for long and short read sequence detection of pathogens. It will also use whole genome sequencing of core isolated and cultured target microbes to provide genomic reference tools for further characterisation and screening.
The focus is on hardy ornamental nursery stock and fungal and bacterial non-quarantine pathogens of Rhododendron and Prunus including Phytophthora and Pseudomonas but this project will provide a more general methodology to apply these methods in routine pathogen surveillance to guide inspection staff and to understand the implications of this approach for the detection and regulation of plant pathogens.
Key Responsibilities
1. Design high throughput eDNA sequencing experiments for plant pathogens and associated microbial communities.
2. Process high throughput sequencing results from plant pathogen eDNA sampling experiments to develop tools for pathogen surveillance and disease inspection.
3. Develop supporting bioinformatic pipeline for disease identification diagnosis and surveillance from eDNA.
4. Contribute to report writing.
5. Publish project research results in appropriate scientific journals.
Funding Information
This position is funded by the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine Research Stimulus Fund.
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential Qualifications PhD in a relevant area such as bioinformatics botany plant science or plant pathology.
Knowledge & Experience
Essential:
* Knowledge and experience of using bioinformatic tools with high throughput DNA sequencing data.
* Ability to generate bioinformatic pipelines for data handling and processing.
* Experience of writing scientific publications and reports.
Desirable:
* Experience of applying bioinformatic tools in Botany Plant Biology Plant Pathology or Horticulture.
Skills & Competencies
* High throughput sequencing next generation sequencing.
* Bioinformatics of HTS and eDNA data.
* Report and scientific paper writing.