Join a team building new capabilities funded by the NIH Common Fund Glycoscience [https://commonfund.nih.gov/glycoscience] to reveal the molecular mechanisms by which major vertebrate cell surface glycans, gangliosides, drive biological and pathological processes relevant to human disease. Gangliosides, which are expressed on the surfaces of all vertebrate cells, play key roles in molecular signaling that impact human diseases including diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, intellectual disability, and many others. They regulate cell physiology by binding to proteins in their own cell membranes or in their local milieu. This newly funded project [https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?aid=9813609] will provide adaptable and accessible chemical biology tools to investigate ganglioside functions in health and disease. We will use these new tools to reveal the “ganglioside interactome” – proteins that translate ganglioside recognition into the regulation of human physiology and pathology. There is a large upside to generating tools in this area of biomedical research, and we anticipate rapid development, validation, application, and dissemination of these tools. As an integral part of validating these new tools, we will identify the ganglioside interactome of human epidermoid cancer cells, human neuroblastoma cells, and primary rodent neurons, all cells that are impacted by ganglioside expression. Our goal is to provide new molecular insights into physiology and pathology, and generate resources and protocols so that others can easily follow our lead.

The project anticipates recruiting up to two new postdoctoral researchers with strong chemical biology interests to drive different aspects of this project including chemical and chemoenzymatic syntheses, click chemistry, photochemistry, membrane biochemistry, cell regulation, neurobiology, and mass spec proteomics (among others). The new fellows will join a focused glycoscience team of postdoctoral and graduate student biomedical researchers investigating the functions of glycans in immunology and neurobiology under separate NIH funding. Salary ($50,000 - $61,000 per year) and benefits will follow NIH and institutional guidelines, with compensation adjusted for prior experience.

This new lab technican will perform experiments to probe the control of inflammation at the molecular level. After training, they will clone and express chimeric binding proteins associated with control of inflammation, perform ELISA binding assays, SDS-PAGE, Western blotting, and other biochemical/molecular preparations and assays. Cell and tissue immunostaining and microscopic data collection will be performed. The successful applicant will maintain our small genetically altered mouse colony, prepare molecular and cellular components and perform experiments using those components. Experiments will include expression of chimeric eukaryotic proteins, extraction and purification of molecules from human and animal tissues and cells, cell and tissue culture, immunocytochemistry, immunohistochemistry, fluorescence microscopy, protein expression, protein purification, protein gel electrophoresis and ELISA. The technician will be responsible (with other laboratory staff) for routine laboratory maintenance, preparing solutions and reagents, and preparing sterile media for cell and tissue culture. After training, the technician will perform day-to-day experiments and set their experimental priorities with limited supervision.