Research Associate in Evolutionary Biochemistry

The UBC Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver invites applications for a Research Associate (RA) position in Evolutionary Biochemistry to join the laboratory of Dr. Nobuhiko Tokuriki. The successful candidate will use microfluidic systems to perform single enzyme kinetics and high-throughput enzyme screening. The candidate will work on enzyme systems including alkaline phosphatase, phosphotriesterase, and APOBEC.

The successful candidate must have demonstrated experience in the preparation of research proposals for funding agencies and patent applications. The history of obtaining international or national fellowship would be preferred.

Responsibilities will include:

• Conduct the research project including design, perform and analyze single enzyme kinetics and high-throughput enzyme screening experiments using microfluidic devices of alkaline phosphatases, phosphotriesterases and APOBEC.
• Supervise undergraduate students to perform various experiments, molecular cloning, protein purification etc.
• Supervise the lab organizations including waste disposals, biological and chemical safeties, etc.

The successful candidate is expected to have completed their PhD and at least four years of postdoctoral research experience. The successful candidate must have:

• Advanced capability and research experience in microfluidics fabrication, fluorescence microscope, high-throughput enzyme screening, protein biochemistry. Especially, the candidate must have demonstrated with:
• (1) single enzyme kinetics using a microfluidic system
• (2) high-throughput enzyme screening using a microfluidic system;
• (3) generate various mutagenized libraries including saturation mutagenesis and error-prone PCR;
• (4) ability to develop and utilize scripts for microscope imaging analyses for single enzyme kinetics and high-throughput microfluidics enzyme screening;
• (5) protein purification and biophysical characterizations.
• Additionally, experience in protein bioinformatics (sequence similarity networks and phylogenetic analyses) is preferred. Demonstrated experience must be documented with first-author publications in impact-factor (>5) journals.