진학프로석·박사 채용 접수 플랫폼

We are looking for Postdoctoral researchers to join the research group “Molecular Biology of Huntington’s disease” leaded by Dr. Veronica Brito at the Department of Biomedicine Institute of Neuroscience, University of Barcelona and Institut de Investigaciones Biomédicas August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS).

Brito’s lab’s main goal is to elucidate the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which the mutant Huntington’s disease gene drives selective neurodegeneration and to translate this knowledge into novel therapeutic strategies. Huntington’s disease (HD) is a fatal, inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expanded CAG repeat in the HTT gene, leading to cognitive, motor, and psychiatric disturbances in patients. While somatic CAG-repeat expansion is recognized as an early event in HD pathogenesis, it remains to be fully understood how this DNA-level mutation gives rise to neuronal pathology. Several evidences have revealed that aberrant RNA processing and the production of HTT1a, a toxic truncated transcript, play key roles in disease progression. The postdoctoral researcher will join the team to contribute to an ongoing, cutting-edge project that builds on our recently published findings suggesting that N6- methyladenosine (m6A) marks on HTT RNA contribute to the generation of toxic HTT1a transcripts. The project aims to investigate how this RNA modification regulates the pathogenic HTT1a transcript in HD, elucidating the molecular links between m6 A deposition, DNA repair, transcriptional dynamics, and aberrant RNA processing within HTT. By defining the role of m6A RNA modifications as a novel layer of gene expression regulation—both at the disease locus and transcriptome-wide—this work seeks to uncover fundamental mechanisms of disease and lay the groundwork for innovative RNA-targeted therapeutic approaches in HD. The project integrates advanced RNA-mapping technologies (Direct RNA sequencing using Oxford Nanopore Technology) and CRISPR-based RNA editing tools to define how m6A controls HTT1a expression and to develop new strategies for precise epitranscriptomic modulation in disease models. This position focuses on experimental investigation of the molecular mechanisms underlying HTT1a expression in Huntington’s disease. The successful candidate will lead the design and execution of molecular and cellular assays, including RNA–protein interaction studies, RNA modification detection, DNA-RNA interaction and DNA repair assays as well as functional validation of bioinformatic predictions in cellular and mouse models.