Postdoctoral research fellow in biology of pluripotency

Smith Group – Living Systems Institute – University of Exeter

An exciting opening is available in the laboratory of Austin Smith to join an ERC- funded programme of investigations into the plasticity of the pluripotency network. We are looking for a skilled researcher motivated by fundamental curiosity with a keen interest in stem cells and cell fate decisions.

Stem cells matching the emergent state of naïve pluripotency in the early embryo have so far been established only from rodents and higher primates. Our goal is to capture naïve pluripotent stem cells from a broad range of mammals and to reveal the core gene regulatory network. This project will apply signalling environments designed from recent insights to maintain naïve stem cells generated by network resetting, somatic cell reprogramming, and/or direct derivation from livestock embryos. Multimodal profiling, in vitro differentiation and in vivo chimaera formation will be employed to evaluate and validate naïve pluripotency. Bioinformatics and network inference will be supported by computational members of the team. Chimaera studies are in partnership with our collaborator Ramiro Alberio at the University of Nottingham.