Postdoctoral Fellow

Postdoctoral Fellow

Job Summary:

The Xu Lab in the Department of Biomedical Sciences is seeking a motivated and skilled Postdoctoral Fellow to join our team. The candidate will lead a research project focusing on molecular microbiology of infectious diseases. One focus of this role involves inhibitor design and validating these targets. The ideal candidate will possess extensive hands-on experience in microbial construct design, genetic transformation, recombinant protein expression, and targeting those proteins with biochemical inhibitors.

Key Responsibilities:

• Inhibitor Design:
  Apply computational tools (docking, molecular dynamics) or experimental methods to design and screen small-molecule, peptide, or fragment-based inhibitors against target proteins.
• Assay Development:
  Establish biochemical, biophysical, and cellular assays to measure inhibitor binding affinity and functional enzyme inhibition.
• Construct Cloning:
  Design and construct expression plasmids, genetic vectors, and CRISPR-based tools for bacterial/host systems.
• Strain Engineering:
  Engineer microbial strains and mammalian cells.
• Protein Expression:
  Purify target proteins using chromatographic methods.
• Characterization:
  Perform biochemical characterization, Western blotting, ELISA, and functional assays to validate protein activity.

Location - MUSOM
- Marshall University School of Medicine

Salary Range
- Salary is commensurate with experience and internal equity

Required Qualifications:

Education
- Ph.D. in Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, or a closely related field.

Experience
- Demonstrated experience in inhibitor design, structural biology, or biochemical assay development for target evaluation. Proven expertise in molecular cloning techniques (Gibson assembly, restriction-based, PCR). Hands-on experience with bacterial transformation and genetic manipulation. Strong background in recombinant protein expression and purification. Evidence of productivity:
At least one first-author publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Experience using structural biology or computational chemistry software (e.g., PyMOL, Schrödinger, Auto Dock, Rosetta). Experience with biophysical characterization techniques (e.g., SPR, ITC, MST). Knowledge of bioinformatics tools for gene/protein analysis.