Post-doc position to study the effects of aneuploidy on human stem cell fitness and fate

A post-doctoral position is available in the group of Tristan Rodriguez (Imperial College London) to study the impact of aneuploidy on early human development. Aneuploidy, or an abnormal and unbalanced chromosome number, is considered the leading cause of pregnancy loss and congenital disorders. However, the mechanisms by which aneuploidy affects the human embryo are not well known. This project will use human pluripotent stem cell models to investigate the impact of different types of aneuploidies on early human development. The position is in collaboration with the lab of Ivana Barbaric (Sheffield University). Human pluripotent stem cell models with gain/loss of specific chromosomes will be analysed to establish the effects that aneuploidy have on pluripotency, and on the ability of stem cells to differentiate and generate spatially patterned tissues. There is increasing evidence that self-correction mechanisms can eliminate aneuploid cells in mosaic tissues (reviewed in Nichols, Lima and Rodriguez, Cell Stem Cell 2022), and recent work by the Rodriguez lab and Barbaric labs have implicated cell competition (Lima et al., Nature Metabolism. 2021; Price et al., Developmental Cell 2021; Pernaute et al., Developmental Cell 2022). For this reason the project will also involve the analysis of aneuploid cell survival in mosaic environments.