Postdoctoral Researcher Genomics

The Swedish Museum of Natural History is a government agency with a mandate to promote knowledge, research and interest in our world. It is a prominent research institution and Sweden's largest museum. For more than 200 years, the museum has been collecting objects and data and conducting research on life on earth. The collections contain more than 11 million plants, animals, fungi, environmental samples, minerals and fossils. All research and knowledge is shared in the exhibitions, Cosmonova and in activities at the museum and digitally.

At the Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics, Swedish Museum of Natural History, alongside running biodiversity informatics infrastructure and bioinformatics analysis service research is conducted on a variety of topics related to evolution, phylogeny, biogeography and genetics of birds, insects and associated organisms. We now expect to hire a researcher capable of contributing to study phenotype evolution under hybridization.

Hybridisation between species is recognised as a process that can lead to the fast evolution of new phenotypes, but it can also introduce additional genetic conflicts or escalate them. In this project the effect of transposable elements (TEs) in hybrid genomes triggering the formation of new SVs like inversion will be investigated.

WORK TASKS
The hypothesis behind this project is that transposable elements (TEs) in hybrid genomes can increase in activity and cause new insertions that in turn can trigger the formation of new SVs like inversions. These new SVs can be a new source of genetic barriers. Therefore, in this view, hybridisation will cause the escalation of genetic conflicts and the very elements underpinning the conflicts will create the barriers to further hybridisation and gene flow.

In this project the task is to test this hypothesis using 240 phased genome assemblies for Whetaers). The aim is 1) to detect TEs and SVs in all individuals; 2) find signatures of increased TE activity and SV formation; 3) detect and compare patterns of gene flow and test if regions resilient to gene flow are indeed enriched in new TE insertions and SVs.

By comparing patterns the aim is to find common and lineagespecific patterns of gene flow.


QUALIFICATIONS
The position requires own external research funding from Vetenskapsrådet for the project "Transposabla element som en källa till strukturella förändringar, genetiska konflikter och begränsningar av genflöde"

Advanced knowledge of gene assembly.

Good knowledge in English.