Postdoctoral position Nantes France

Reply

Posted: Thu, Jan 7 2010 5:12 PM

rated by 0 users

We are seeking highly qualified and motivated applicants with a Ph.D. at 
the time of employment. The post-doctoral position is funded by the 
French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) for one year, 
possibly for two years if renewal is allowed, and is available 
immediately. Please if you are interested in this position reply to 
Cedric Gaillard at cedric.gaillard at nantes.inra.fr . The candidate should 
have a Ph.D. in chemistry or materials science or biology and mainly a 
strong background in scanning probe techniques and surface chemistry of 
AFM tips.
______________________________________
Description: AFM / Fluorescence correlative microscopy for the imaging 
of proteins at the interface of stabilized emulsions. Newly CEPIA 
research division funded post-doctoral position is available to 
investigate the building-up mechanisms of arrangement of proteins 
involved in the stabilisation of emulsions. The direct localisation of 
individual macromolecules remains an important challenge to elucidate 
their fine organisation at the nanometric scale and to connect it to the 
properties of the macroscopic systems formed by the assembly of the 
macromolecules. The complementarity of fluorescence detection and atomic 
force microscopy holds great promise for investigation of any systems 
where the arrangement of biopolymers determines the macroscopic 
properties. In this project, combined AFM and fluorescence microscopy 
experiments will be performed to get the detection of two families of 
proteins localized at the interface of emulsions. For that, a simple 
interface will be considered as a model in which a bovine protein and a 
vegetal protein are used for the stabilization of a water/oil emulsion. 
Then, two parallel strategies of chemical modifications will been 
developed. Firstly, AFM tips will be functionalized with antibodies to 
allow specific AFM detection of the corresponding proteins at the 
interface. Secondly, aqueous-soluble semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum 
dots) with specific size and fluorescence emission will be covalently 
bound to the proteins.
Our strategy that will be developed by the candidate is then based, in a 
third step, on the simulataneous detection by fluorescence of individual 
proteins, previously coupled with home- made quantum dots, and on AFM 
imaging using AFM cantilevers chemically-modified with pure and specific 
antibodies.
Nanomechanical properties of the individual proteins and of the 
corresponding antibodies will also be separatively probed by force 
spectroscopy to get information about the forces and kinetics involved 
in the breaking of ligand – receptor bonds.