Within the Genome4Brussels consortium (G4BXL), Prof. Tom Lenaerts and Dr. Sofia Papadimitriou (info) are hiring a postdoctoral researcher to join the Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels (http://www.ibsquare.be) and the ULB Machine Learning group (http://mlg.ulb.ac.be) to continue their fascinating work on the identification of the oligogenic causes of rare and not so rare diseases. The announcement is available via this link: https://www.euraxess.be/jobs/697360 

Most current bioinformatics tools focus on the monogenic causes of diseases. Prof. Tom Lenaerts and Guillaume Smits and their teams are working on the development of next generation genomic interpretation tools that will no longer focus on monogenic causes but will open the analysis to oli/polygenic causes of diseases.

They have already achieved promising results with the development of VarCoPP and ORVAL (Variant Combinations Pathogenicity Predictor work (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1815601116) and http://orval.ibsquare.be).

In the framework of the Genome4Brussels consortium, Prof. Tom Lenaerts is working on adapting these oligogenic tools into tools for detecting gene networks and the epigenetic interaction of one (or more) genes with a predefined anchor gene. In this case, the anchor gene used to implement this approach is the FBN1 gene (which causes Marfan syndrome).

Such a disruptive tool could innovatively enable the discovery of new therapeutic avenues for many rare and not so rare diseases (starting with Marfan syndrome).

Thanks to the work of Fondation 101 Génomes and its partners, Prof. Tom Lenaerts' team has access to the data needed to conduct this ambitious research and, thanks to Innoviris, to the financial resources to do so.

Join us in this adventure and contact Prof. Lenaerts now by sending him: (i) your CV,(ii) a list of publications, (iii) a letter of motivation and (iv) three letters of reference: Postdoctoral position in machine learning and bioinformatics | EURAXESS Belgium