Postdoctoral Research Associate in Molecular Biosciences

Biosciences is one of the very best departments in the UK (2nd Guardian 2027, 4th Complete University Guide 2027) and it has an outstanding reputation for excellence in teaching, research, and the employability of our students. The department provides a dynamic and interdisciplinary research environment, with the Cann group located within bespoke laboratories for interdisciplinary work at the biology-chemistry interface.

Death is ubiquitous in biology and fundamentally important to life. Across ecosystems, nutrients locked within dead organisms are recycled and reused to support the growth of new life. Yet not all nutrients are equally valuable. Some biomolecules can be used immediately, whereas others require substantial processing before they can be assimilated. This raises a fundamental question: have organisms evolved mechanisms that continue to function after death, transforming cellular material into forms that other organisms can more readily reuse?

Our recent work identified the bacterial Lon protease as one such mechanism, demonstrating that cellular proteins can continue to be degraded after death into fragments readily taken up by neighbouring cells. We now hypothesise that this phenomenon is widespread and that many bacterial enzymes possess dual functions: roles in the physiology of living cells and previously unrecognised post-mortem activities that promote nutrient recycling.

To test this hypothesis, the successful candidate will combine transcriptomics, metabolomics, genetics and large-scale Escherichia coli mutant collections to identify gene products that function after death and determine how they contribute to nutrient acquisition by living bacteria. The project will combine experimental microbiology with systems-level approaches to uncover the molecular mechanisms linking death to nutrient recycling. The work will provide fundamental insights into how bacterial communities recycle nutrients and how post-mortem biochemical processes shape ecosystem function.

The postdoctoral researcher will be based in the laboratory of Professor Martin Cann in the Department of Biosciences at Durham University and will be part of a major interdisciplinary consortium involving researchers at Durham, Edinburgh, Oxford and Cambridge. Together, the consortium seeks to establish a new understanding of death as an active biological process that shapes ecosystems through nutrient recycling.