We seek a highly motivated, independent early career researcher interested in joining a research program within the context of a high-competitive Starting ERC and Junior Star projects with a possibility to apply for further independent early-career projects. The successful candidate will join the interdisciplinary team of Ecological Genomics at Charles University in Prague, lead by Filip Kolář and will be integrated into a broad network of local and international collaborators.

Evolution is driven by a combination of deterministic forces and stochasticity, whose relative importance, however, remains a matter of debate. Knowing how predictable is evolution can provide insights into predictive evolution of crops, pathogens or species under climate change.

This project will address genomic basis and ecological consequences of convergent genome evolution in natural environments. By leveraging fascinating natural diversity of European Brassicaceae plants which repeatedly adapted to exceptionally strong selective pressure, toxic serpentine soils, the project aims at uncovering general mechanisms determining which portion of the genome evolves in a predictable manner. The successful candidate will use long-read sequencing data of multiple plant species to assembly novel references and identify structural variation. By integrating these findings with available short-read population-level genomic and transcriptomic data, they will identify convergent adaptive gene candidates and use comparative genomic approaches to infer the drivers of genomic convergence across species. The project builds on our previous research in natural Arabidopsis populations (e.g. Konečná et al. 2021, Bohutínská et al. 2021) but will extend well beyond this system in order to discern generality. Alongside the head-start with available data, the candidate is expected to be fully involved in the overall project design and will lead the analytical part of the project.

The candidate shall have (i) a keen interest in leading an independent research program within a collaborative research group, (ii) experience in handling large scale short- or long-read sequence data, (iii) a strong background in structural, statistical, and/or population genomics and (iv) PhD in evolutionary biology, genetics, bioinformatics, or related fields.

References
Konečná V, Bray S, Vlček J, Bohutínská M, Požárová D, Roy Choudhury R, Bollmann-Giolai A, Flis P, Salt DE, Parisod C, Yant L, Kolář F(2021): Parallel adaptation in an autopolyploid is dominated by repeated recruitment of shared alleles. – Nature Communications. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-25256-5
Bohutínská M, Vlček J, Yair S, Laenen B, Konečná V, Fracassetti M, Slotte T, Kolář F (2021): Genomic basis of parallel adaptation varies with divergence in Arabidopsis and its relatives. – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.2022713118.

Salary: co-funding 1000 EUR/month is ensured
Co-founding resources: Starting ERC project Double Adapt
Department: Botany
Supervisor: Filip Kolář
E-mail: filip.kolar@natur.cuni.cz
Phone: +420 221 95 1638
Position available from: January 1, 2024
Deadline date for applications: July 25, 2023

Applicants must submit required documents to: filip.kolar@natur.cuni.cz (project supervisor) and in a copy to pavla.pouskova@natur.cuni.cz (International Department)