Genomic Research SpecialistBrilliant Planet

Job Announcement: Genomic Research Specialist

Location: Harpenden at Rothamsted Research

About Brilliant Planet

Brilliant Planet is unlocking the power of algae as a scalable, affordable and near-term solution to climate change. Our innovative process allows vast quantities of microalgae to grow on desert land, without using freshwater by harnessing a natural process that contributes to the health of our oceans and air. Our facilities naturally capture and permanently store 30x more carbon per hectare than forests, bringing new environmental, social and economic productivity to costal deserts.

At Brilliant Planet you will meaningfully contribute to solving one of our planet’s most pressing issues: climate change. You’ll own your role and will be part of a passionate team of diverse professionals that will support you along the way.

Brilliant Planet was founded in 2013 and is funded by several of the world’s leading climate technology investors. Our labs are in Harpenden at Rothamsted Research, with operations in Morocco. We’re a company with science, engineering and technology at our core. Following eight years of pioneering R&D and five years of pilot operations we are now developing a scalable production platform that can be deployed commercially worldwide.

About the role

We are currently seeking an experienced, highly skilled, and passionate Algal Genome Research Specialist to lead our scientific research and development efforts in our UK labs. The successful candidate will be responsible for delivering the research & development relating to microalgal genetic research in collaboration with our UK R&D team, ensuring that our solutions are both effective and sustainable. We work with unique chlorophyte and diatom strains from the Moroccan Atlantic, that Brilliant Planet has bioprospected and extensively characterised physiologically.

Responsibilities include:

• Establish methods for cryptic organism:
  • Nucleic acid extractions, quantitative transcriptomics, as well as regulatory marker expression analysis of siRNA, miRNA and lncRNAs
  • Field sample preparation for metagenomics & metabarcoding, perform species analysis using 18S, 28S and internal-transcribed-spacer regions ITS 1&2.
• Focus a bioinformatician on assembly of novel previously uncharacterised diatom genomes, with undetermined ploidy and multiple repeat sequences, from both Ilumina (short) and MinION (long) reads, using known genomic, chloroplast and mitochondrial sequences as a framework, perform in silico copy number analysis to decontaminate the sequence data (for example, using tools such as Bowtie 2, BLASR or perform unsupervised binning approaches (e.g., MetaBAT 2) based on factors such as sequence composition and abundance, followed by quality analysis using programmes such as CheckM. Attention to long-terminal-repeat retrotransposons and assessments of genome completeness by seeking orthologs of single-copy number eukaryotic genes.
• Collaborate toannotate new genomes as well as transcriptomes in the context of diurnal cycles of diatom photo, temperature, and nutrient-physiological assessments, producing expression heatmaps and quantitative assessments. The bioinformatician will also determine the presence of N-terminal repeat, organelle targeting sequences, transporter classifications, and regulatory sequences associated with gene expression. Given the novelty of diatom genomes comfort with evolutionary annotation and the creation and analysis of new Genome-scale-metabolic models (GEMs) are needed. Experience with for example, RAST, PROKKA, PASA, MAKER, NCBI, Ensembl are helpful.