NIH Job advert Nov 2019

Sly Saint · Nov 22, 2019

National institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, NC

Position Description:
Two postdoctoral positions are available in the Biostatistics and Computational Biology Branch (BCBB) at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH, in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, under Dr. Alison Motsinger-Reif (https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/atniehs/labs/bb/staff/motsinger-reif/index.cfm).

The successful candidate will develop and apply methods to address problems in genetic association mapping. We are interested in methods development for genome-wide association studies, for detecting gene-gene and gene-environment interactions, and for integrating data across “-omes”. There are a number of opportunities for collaboration and application, in studies of common, complex diseases and drug and chemical response traits. However, research topics are not limited to those, and candidates with different topics of interest are encouraged to apply.

Example ongoing projects that could be the focus of these positions include the following:
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2) Integrative Omics in myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS):

ME/CFS patients suffer from a range of debilitating conditions with significant pain and fatigue. Given the lack of diagnostic molecular markers for ME/CFS and a very limited understanding of its etiology, there is critical need to understand the etiology and mechanisms of ME/CFS predisposition and severity, as well as to define set of ME/CFS clinical ontology for stratification of the disease.

While early studies showed promise in identifying different metabolic, immunologic, or microbial biomarkers of ME/CFS, these studies were limited in scope, sample size, or, importantly, integration across datatypes.

A prospective cohort has been designed to address our overarching hypothesis that the immune system’s etiological role in ME/CFS is predicated on two major factors: first, that immune cells themselves are programmed to respond aberrantly to environmental stimuli, and second, that ME/CFS patients harbor microbes that aberrantly stimulate immune cells.

This prospective cohort includes ME/CFS patients from which clinical metadata and immune, metabolome and gut microbiome markers analyzed longitudinally. Acquiring these datatypes simultaneously allows us to test our hypothesis in an integrated fashion: first, we can evaluate whether alterations in metabolism can instigate aberrant inflammation or reflect altered immune activity, and second, whether microbial dysbiosis is associated with specific ME/CFS inflammatory markers or markers of immune dysfunction.

We will develop and apply advanced bioinformatic analyses to identify homogeneous, therapeutically actionable subgroups of ME/CFS patients.

We hypothesize that clustering of patients across more than one type of molecular or genomic investigation will provide a particularly strong indication. We will: 1) computationally stratify clinical aspects of ME/CFS; 2) use biclustering techniques to identify candidate ME/CFS subgroups in each of the genomic modalities; and 3) use integrative multimodality clustering to identify significant subgroups defined by more than one genomic investigation.
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https://www.training.nih.gov/postdo...ds_in_Statistical_Genetics_and_Bioinformatics

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NIH Job advert Nov 2019

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