Postdoc: UCalifornia_Berkeley.EvolutionPhosphoregulation
From the Evolution Directory (EvolDir) via Twitter.
Post doc position available in the Holt lab at UC Berkeley.
http://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/holt/
2 years. Partial funding - applicant will be required to apply for
fellowship funding.
Please send a C.V. the contact information for 3 references and a letter
of intent. You should state in some detail what you are interested in
working on and why. Feel free to propose other project areas on the
website or ideas of your own that you think fit in the lab. We are
primarily a molecular cell biology and biochemistry lab. We seek highly
motivated individuals with good skills at the bench. Computational
skills are also preferred.
The control networks that drive cell division have changed extensively
during evolution to adapt to the needs of myriad modern organisms. We
aim to understand this process of change.
One important signaling currency is phosphorylation. Protein kinases
such as the Cyclin-dependent kinase (Cdk1) coordinate hundreds of
cellular processes during cell division by phosphorylating proteins and
thereby altering their activity. During evolution, kinases have
duplicated and diverged, adding complexity to cell division signaling
networks. For example, Cdk1 duplicated about 800 million years ago and
the duplicate gene diverged to give rise to a related kinase, Ime2. The
addition of the Ime2 kinase enabled the conversion of the single mitotic
division to the double meiotic divisions (seeMol. Cell. 2007
<http://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/holt/PDFs/holt_2007.pdf>).
We aim to understand how cellular networks adapt when a new kinase
diverges and alters its specificity. This event will incur a large cost,
due to toxic phosphoryaltion events, and therefore must confer great
benefits to be selected for and fixed in evolution. Our recent work
suggests that this benefit can be readily obtained for the simple reason
that mechanisms of phosphoregulation are quite simple and therefore easy
to evolve (seeScience 2009
<http://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/holt/PDFs/holt_2009.pdf>). However, these
ideas have yet to be empirically tested. We aim to use synthetic biology
approaches to investigate the evolvability of phosphoregulation.
*
* *Global analysis of Cdk1 substrate phosphorylation sites provides
insights into evolution*
Holt LJ, Tuch BB, Villén J, Johnson AD, Gygi SP & Morgan DO.
Science, Sep 25;325(5948):1682-6 (2009)
*
Evolution of Ime2 phosphorylation sites on Cdk1 substrates provides a
mechanism to limit the effects of the phosphatase Cdc14 in meiosis*
Holt LJ, Hutti J, Cantley L, Morgan DO.
Mol Cell. Mar 9;25(5):689-702 (2007)
--
Liam Holt
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Molecular & Cell Biology
142 Life Sciences Addition # 3200
Berkeley, CA 94720-3200
http://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/holt/
Liam Holt