Post doc in molecular biology and aquatic ecology DNA metabarcoding

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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

You will be based in Thonon, the Carrtel research unit (INRAE https://carrtel.lyon-grenoble.hub.inrae.fr/unit) as part of a postdoctoral research position within European Biodiversa+ project DNAquaIMG project (Innovating transnational aquatic biodiversity monitoring using high-throughput DNA tools and automated image recognition) https://dnaquaimg.eu/

You will will work with scientists of the UMR Carrtel INRAE (F. Rimet and 2 other post-doc and an engineer) on very similar topic (algal metabarcoding, metagenomics, biomonitoring, ecological status assessment).

The UMR Carrtel INRAE (Thonon, France) is partner of this project, leaded by F. Leese (Univ. Essen, Germany) with 12 other European partners. The scientific objective of DNAquaIMG is to explore the individual and combined potential of molecular and image-based approaches for aquatic biodiversity monitoring. A focus will be on European rivers under different stressor impacts as well as restoration after stress release. A focus will be carried out on two very good ecological indicators: diatoms and macroinvertebrates.

Four research questions we will address in this European project:

-              What changes in macroinvertebrate and diatom biodiversity, i.e. losses and gains other than the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) indicator taxa, occur with changes in WFD ecological status?

-              Do restorations that raise the WFD status class assessment to good or high also represent an equivalent recovery of lost biodiversity?

 

What are additional insights that the combined use of molecular and image-based taxa assessment deliver compared to each assessment approach applied alone?

-              Can the molecular and image-based methods be used to define biodiversity reference conditions and help identify novel biodiversity indicators?

Your missions:

The main work of our team in the project is on molecular biodiversity assessment of microalgae (diatoms), in particular the missions will be the following:

1.            Assess existing primers for diatom species identification and make recommendations (work almost complete).

2.            Produce guidelines and protocols for diatom metabarcoding analysis that could be proposed for European standardization and stakeholders (in progress). Propose criteria to ensure the quality of analyses realized with the protocols proposed and based on the results of a ring-test that has already been carried out.

3.            Analyze and assess the complementarity of image-based data and metabarcoding data (e.g. species boundaries, ecosystem assessment …), write publications.

You will have to follow regular online meetings of different work packages of the project, and report on the progress of your work to the project team.

The project started in 2024 and will end in 2027.

Training and skills

• Recommended education:
• PhD (preferred), good skills in molecular biology, metabarcoding/metagenomics, microbial ecology, user of R, bio-statistics
• Eventually engineer (master degree) with a good experience
• Required skills:
• Molecular lab experience necessary
• Good knowledge in bioinformatics and biostatistics
• Ability for communication: writing papers, oral presentations
• Preferred experience:
• Skills in diatom taxonomy and ecology
• knowledge in aquatic biomonitoring
• Desired skills:
• Leadership and critical thinking skills
• Ability to work in a team

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

I send my CV and my motivation letter