Antibiotic and Antitumor production: Postdoc, Spain 2077 views

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (IF) – Postdoc position in Enhanced antibiotic and antitumor production in Streptomyces by genetic manipulation of two-component systems.

Project description

Location: Institute of Functional Biology and Genomics in Salamanca (Spain)

Superviser: Dr. Ramón Santamaría (http://ibfg.es/en/ramon-santamaria-en) and Dra. Margarita Díaz Martínez.

Description

This project aims to:

1. Contribute to a better understanding of the regulatory systems of Streptomyces and
2. Provide knowledge for improving production of new antitumor and antibiotics.

General Introduction: Two component systems (TCSs) are involved in this regulation through complex pathways that allow them to act as positive or negative regulators of the production of these molecules. Our group, is stablishing the pathways of regulation of different TCSs in S. coelicolor and explores the capacity that strains mutated in these systems or overexpressing positive regulators, as AbrC3, have for the production of known antitumoral and/or antibiotic molecules and to activate silenced pathways in different strains and species of Streptomyces (Rico et al. 2014 PLoS One 9:e109844, Rico et al 2014 Appl. Environ. Microbiology 80: 2417-2428).

Thus, during the project, the pathway of regulation of different TCS will be studied in order to identify genes directly regulated by the studied systems. Strains modified in several TCSs that are involved in regulation of antibiotic production will be generated by using S. coelicolor strains that do not produce any of the endogenous antibiotics in order to prevent the putative competition of different routes for common metabolic precursors when clusters encoding molecules of interest are introduced in these strains.

The potential of the positive regulator AbrC3, over the activation of routes of antibiotics and antitumorals, will be studied by overexpressing this regulator in about 100 Streptomyces strains selected as producers of interesting molecules with activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis and molecules with high potential for treating certain types of cancer

Research Area: Biological sciences / Biolotechnology

How to Apply:

If interested, Please sent an email to the Project Manager, Julio Flecha García (julio.fg@usal.es) before 10th of July 2016. (Please note that the deadline for proposal submission to EU is 14th of September 2016). It is only needed the CV of the applicant