Postdoctoral and PhD positions: Autophagy & Chemo-optogenetics
Umea University is dedicated to providing creative environments for learning and work. We
offer a wide variety of courses and programs, world leading research, and excellent innovation
and collaboration opportunities. More than 4300 employees and 33979 students from over 60
nationalities have already chosen Umea University. The recent breakthrough researches from
Umea include deciphering the molecular mechanisms of the bacterial CRISPR-Cas9 system
and repurposing it into a tool for genome editing.

The Wu lab recently relocated from Max Planck Institute in Dortmund Germany to Umea
Sweden. The lab is located within the cross-disciplinary Chemical Biological Centre (video)
(www.kbc.umu.se/english/) at Umea University. The lab is fully equipped for biological and
chemical researches with access to excellent facilities and state-of-art equipment and
platforms in a creative, inspiring, international and highly interactive environment. Facilities
include Protein Expertise Platform, X-ray, Proteomics, NMR (850-400 MHz), Cryo-EM and
Biochemical Imaging Centre (confocal, FLIM, spinning disk, TIRF, STORM).

Project: Autophagy mechanisms
Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved self-eating process mainly to eliminate or recycle
dysfunctional cellular organelles or unused proteins. Autophagy plays an important role in
physiology including development and ageing and has been associated with diverse human
diseases, including cancer, neurodegeneration and pathogen infection. Autophagy modulation
is implicated in the treatment of diseases such as neurodegeneration and cancer. Despite
extensive work, the mechanisms of autophagosome formation and autophagy regulation are
not yet well established. Our laboratory has elucidated fundamental mechanisms underlying
autophagosome formation and bacterial escape from host autophagy using chemical genetic
approaches (eLife 2017, Angew Chem 2017, Nat Chem Biol 2019). We will combine cell
biological, biochemical, and novel chemical and chemo-optogenetic approaches to understand
the mechanism of autophagic membrane morphogenesis and bacterial interaction with host
autophagy.

Project: Chemo-optogenetics
Genetic perturbations such as knock-out or knock-down approaches is powerful for biological
studies. However, traditional genetic approaches are chronic (hours to days). Consequently,
the phenotype may not be detected due to adaptation and the dynamics of phenotypic change
cannot be followed. Chemical genetic approaches using small molecules are acute, reversible,
conditional and tunable and have been very useful to dissect the complexity of biological
regulatory networks. However, many of these compounds have additional off-target effects that
may confound elucidation of biological systems in certain contexts. Our laboratory has
developed a set of chemical and photochemically induced dimerization (CID, pCID, psCID)
system to spatiotemporally control cellular signaling and intracellular cargo transport (Angew
Chem 2014, 2017, 2018, 2018). We will further develop novel chemo-optogenetic systems that
enables the activity to be controlled by light with high spatial and temporal precision in live cells
and organisms.
The projects are interdisciplinary with strong international collaborations across scientific
disciplines. The European Research Council (ERC) and Wallenberg Foundation are funding
the research in long term.

Requirements
The required qualification for postdoc is a doctoral degree in cell biology, biochemistry,
chemical biology, or in another relevant field. The required qualification for PhD student is a
master degree or equivalent in chemistry or biology related field. Highly motivated young
talents are encouraged to apply.

Information
For further information you are welcome to contact Prof. Yaowen Wu
E-mail: yaowen.wu@umu.se.
Website: https://www.umu.se/en/staff/yaowen-wu/?expandaccordion=b
Press release:
https://www.kva.se/sv/pressrum/pressmeddelanden/goran-gustafssonpriser-2019-tremiljoner-
mer-till-yngre-forskare
https://www.umu.se/en/news/yaowen-wu-is-awarded-the-goran-gustafsson-prize-inmolecular-
biology_7673132/
附件(392.4KB) UmU_postdocPhD_1905(1).pdf
--
修改:bambooooo FROM 166.111.114.*
FROM 166.111.114.*