Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Molecular Epidemiology

Grade UE07: £41,064- £48,822 per annum

CMVM / School of Genetics and Cancer

Full-time: 35 hours per week

Fixed-term: 36/48 months

Vacancies available: 2

An MRC-funded grant ("Blood- and saliva-based DNA methylation biomarkers of disease") which will explore epigenetic biomarkers of organ ageing, proteins and disease. A 2-year post in statistical genetics under the supervision of Prof Matt Robinson (IST, Vienna) will also be announced in due course to complement the two Edinburgh-based posts.

The research project will utilise DNA methylation data from three large, Scottish studies across both blood and saliva (~35,000 samples in total). The researchers will:

• Build epigenetic biomarkers for 11 organ age estimates (see PMID: ) and 10,000 proteins (see PMID: ) using longitudinal data from 800 members of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936.
• Test these biomarkers in a subset of 1,000 volunteers from Generation Scotland.
• Determine which biomarkers correlate across biosamples (blood and saliva)
• Apply the biomarkers to blood-based DNAm from 19,000 Generation Scotland volunteers and to saliva-based DNAm from 11,000 independent Generation Scotland volunteers before studying their associations with the incidence of 174 disease outcomes plus all-cause mortality.
• Build pipelines to replicate findings through two international consortia projects
  - GoDMC and DEEP.
• Develop and apply a novel multivariate GWA framework to identify the shared and unique SNP correlates of a measured protein and its DNAm analogue.
• Use summary-level bivariate associations between the omics layers (SNPs, CpGs, Epi Scores and proteins) and disease outcomes to build graph models that identify age-specific causal pathways.

These posts are full-time (35 hours per week) and will be office-based for a minimum of 3 days a week. The research management team includes Riccardo Marioni, Simon Cox, Sarah Harris (Edinburgh), Matthew Robinson (IST, Vienna) Josine Min and Hannah Elliott (Bristol) alongside project partners Profs Tony Wyss-Coray (Stanford) and Dan Belsky (Columbia). Part-time or remote working arrangements are not possible.

The salary for the post is £41,064 to £48,822 per annum.

• PhD in molecular/epigenetic epidemiology.
• Outstanding track record of first author publications.
• Ability to mentor students/postdocs and to design and manage research projects.
• Excellent understanding of genetic/epigenetic epidemiology.
• Strong statistical analysis skills.