Missions

The postdoctoral researcher will join the bioinformatics team at the MMSB Laboratory (UMR 5086; MOMS team). Responsibilities: (1) computer simulations as part of the SELDOM project, focusing on interactions between lipids and proteins in lipid droplets; (2) development and maintenance of the POP_MD code for non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of biological systems.

Activités

The successful candidate will be responsible for:
• Contributing to various tasks related to the modeling of lipids and membrane proteins involved in lipid droplet biogenesis.
• Developing and implementing the POP-MD algorithm in the OpenMM software for the preparation of coarse-grained simulations with the Martini force field, including the preparation of membrane protein systems.
• Contributing to the development of the Martini 3 force field for neutral lipids (cholesterol esters) and proteins; in particular, the person recruited will be responsible for optimizing the parameters for neutral lipids.
• Develop and implement new methodologies for analyzing molecular simulation trajectories carried out by the MOMS team.
• Develop tutorials to illustrate how the various bioinformatics tools used by the team work, and share them on the team's GitHub site.

Compétences

• General knowledge of structural biology (biological membranes, membrane proteins).
• General theoretical knowledge in the field of statistical physics, and knowledge of the principles of physical chemistry determining the structure of biological macromolecules (in particular proteins and lipid membranes) and their interactions.
• Theoretical and practical knowledge of the principles and algorithms of molecular dynamics, and in particular of the GROMACS software.
• Theoretical knowledge and experience with the Martini 3 force field is desirable.
• Practical knowledge of the Linux operating system (including the basics of system administration), the bash language, and computer task schedulers for computing clusters.
• Practical knowledge of the Python language and its scientific computing and data analysis libraries.

Contexte de travail

Research conducted at the MMSB laboratory focuses primarily on microbiology and structural biology. Within MMSB, the MOMS team is primarily interested in the structure and function of biological membranes, using bioinformatics and molecular simulations. In addition, MOMS participates in the development of the Martini force field, and we develop software and methodologies for molecular simulations of biological systems.
The team leader of MOMS is Luca Monticelli. Cécile Hilpert is the software engineer in the same team and will be the contact person for technical tasks.

Le poste se situe dans un secteur relevant de la protection du potentiel scientifique et technique (PPST), et nécessite donc, conformément à la réglementation, que votre arrivée soit autorisée par l'autorité compétente du MESR.

Contraintes et risques

Computer-based work