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Vacancy not publishedCompany DescriptionIQS, a founding member of Universitat Ramon Llull, is made up of two university faculties: IQS School of Engineering and IQS School of Management; IQS Executive Education, which offers specialized training to professionals and companies; the IQS Tech Transfer division, which carries out research, innovation, and technology transfer for industry and companies; and by IQS Tech Factory, which promotes entrepreneurship and supports the creation of new scientific-technological companies.
With more than 100 years of teaching experience, IQS is a benchmark university center, committed to responding to the continuous challenges that the social, economic, technological, and industrial context poses.Our vocation and commitment is the comprehensive training of people with attitudes, knowledge, and skills that drive them towards their personal and professional development.
We promote scientific and technological knowledge, business transformation, and the progress of society.
At IQS, we are looking for professionals committed to these values.Job DescriptionWe are offering a two-year contract for a highly talented researcher to join the group and participate in collaborative projects on protein engineering of carbohydrate active enzymes in biocatalysis and synthetic biology.
The postdoctoral researcher will mainly be involved in and lead the project: New-to-nature glycosidases as bio-orthogonal tools in metabolic labeling and microbiome studies.Bio-orthogonal unmasking of caged substrates (masked probes, metabolites, drugs, labeling agents) in living cells enables the study of biological processes and biomolecular functions in their natural environment.
The project aims at developing engineered glycosidase enzymes/un-natural glycoconjugate substrates pairs for the bio-orthogonal and selective in vivo unmasking of probes/metabolites/labeling agents by the genetically-encoded engineered hydrolase for metabolic labeling and microbiome studies.This is a collaborative project between the Planas Lab at IQS-URL, Barcelona (enzyme engineering and chemical biology) and the Peczuh's Lab at the University of Connecticut, USA (synthetic carbohydrate chemistry).
The project envisages proof-of-concept applications in microbiome studies (engraftment of a specific strain into a microbiome) and metabolic labeling (bacterial cell wall polysaccharides biosynthesis).Central to the project is the design and implementation of diverse bio-orthogonal engineered glycosidase/un-natural glycoconjugate substrate pairs.
It will involve state-of-the-art protein design and engineering by directed evolution approaches, development of high-throughput screening methods, and biochemical characterization of engineered variants for specificity and bio-orthogonality on designer unnatural glycoside conjugates for subsequent implementation to the relevant proof-of-concept applications