One PhD position with Interest in Protein Biochemistry and X-Ray Crystallography : Germany

One PhD position with Interest in Protein Biochemistry, Assay Design and X-Ray Crystallography available atChemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society, Germany

The Institute : The Chemical Genomics Centre is an initiative of the Max Planck Society in cooperation with Merck Serono, AstraZeneca, Bayer HealthCare, Bayer CropScience and Boehringer Ingelheim. It stands for high quality research in the area of Chemical Genomics and strong collaborations between industry and Max Planck research.

The Group : In the group of Therapeutic Transcriptome Modifications we identify small chemical molecules that are able to either inhibit or stabilize certain bimolecular interactions. These can be either protein-protein interactions or protein-RNA interactions.

The Project : To fix a misbalanced transcriptome state of a cell, the SMAD protein family of adaptor proteins are our focus of interest. You will develop and use in vitro and cell based assays to identify small molecules that have the ability to inhibit or stabilize the interaction of SMADs with their target transcription factors, activators or repressors. Additionally you will determine the structure of the protein complexes with its bound modifier and analyse the binding modes.

The Requirements : We are looking for highly motivated individuals, who are seeking for a challenging project taking advantage of our position between industry and academia. Insight into molecular cell biology and protein biochemistry is required, experience with protein crystallization and protein signalling would be an advantage.