Postdoctoral Scientist in Genomics / Bioinformatics

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INRAE presentation

The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) is a major player in research and innovation. It is a community of 12,000 people with 272 research, experimental research, and support units located in 18 regional centres throughout France. Internationally, INRAE is among the top research organisations in the agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, as well as in ecology and environmental science. It is the world’s leading research organisation specialising in agriculture, food and the environment. INRAE’s goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. Faced with a growing world population, climate change, resource scarcity, and declining biodiversity, the Institute has a major role to play in building solutions and supporting the necessary acceleration of agricultural, food and environmental transitions.

Work environment, missions and activities

The laboratory

You will be working in the Genomics-Info Resources Unit (URGI) at the INRAE Versailles site (https://urgi.versailles.inrae.fr/). This bioinformatics laboratory, which employs around twenty people, is made up of two teams. The ‘Information systems and data integration’ team works on the integration of genetic and genomic data. The other team, ‘Genome Analysis’, is interested in the evolution of genomes in relation to transposable elements.

The host team

You will belong to the ‘Genome Analysis’ team which consists of 1 Research Director, 1 Research Engineer, 2 Design Engineers. This team is internationally recognised for its expertise in genome analysis. It was involved in a large number of genome annotation projects where it carries out structural and functional annotations. It studies the structure, function and evolution of genomes. In particular, it is developing a software suite called REPET, which is used in many international sequencing projects to annotate transposable elements.

Your activities

The project you will join aims to understand to what extent transposable elements (TEs) contribute to the evolution of regulatory pathways in plants. This project will be led by Johann Confais and Hadi Quesneville, with complementary expertise on evolution, molecular genetics and genomics from Clémentine Vitte and Leandro Quadrana.

You will be in charge of the TE annotation using innovative new methods to identify young, ancient, and even the so-called “dark-matter”, i.e. very ancient TE-derived sequences. With these annotations you will study Cis Regulatory Elements (CRE) in TEs and decipher the contribution of recent and ancient TEs to developmental and stress-induced functions across plant evolution.

Training and skills

Your profile

We seek a candidate who possesses the following:

- PhD in Genomics and Bioinformatics, with strong foundation in plant genomics

- Strong background in genome analysis required, particularly in Transposable Element analysis

INRAE's life quality

By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):

- up to 30 days of annual leave + 15 days "Reduction of Working Time" (for a full time);
- parenting support: CESU childcare, leisure services;
- skills development systems: training, career advise;
- social support: advice and listening, social assistance and loans;
- holiday and leisure services: holiday vouchers, accommodation at preferential rates;
- sports and cultural activities;
- collective catering.

How to apply

The position starts on the 1st of march 2025 (negotiable).

Please send a mail with “Postdoc SATURN” object to johann.confais@inrae.fr with a motivation letter, a CV with a list of publications, a summary of past research, and contact information of at least two references.