Research Assistant, Royal Society

Job Description

About Us
We are a world-class visitor attraction and leading science research centre. We use the Museum's unique collections and our unrivalled expertise to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today. We care for more than 80 million objects spanning billions of years and welcome more than five million visitors annually and 16 million visits to our website.

Today the Museum is more relevant and influential than ever. By attracting people from a range of backgrounds to work for us, we can continue to look at the world with fresh eyes and find new ways of doing things.

We employ 900 staff in a variety of roles, all united by our vision of a future where people and planet thrive. We need everyone to have the passion and drive to help us with our mission to create advocates for our planet and inspire millions to care about the natural world.

Diversity and inclusion matter to us.

Our vision is of a future where both people and the planet thrive. Diversity is one of our core values and we strive to build a workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging. All new staff who join us learn about the importance of diversity and inclusion to the Museum and how to contribute to creating an inclusive environment.

We know we have more to do, but we are committed to ensuring that everyone who works at the Museum feels they can thrive and feel valued and respected.

About the role

In this Royal Society funded role, you will join the research team of Dr. Christopher Laumer, a research fellow at the NHM (National History Museum), whose group studies the biodiversity, genome biology, molecular ecology, and systematics of meiofauna (in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial settings). As a principally wet-lab Research Assistant with us, you will work under Dr. Laumer’s supervision to implement and scale up innovative molecular protocols that have revolutionary potential to improve our understanding of invertebrate biodiversity and genome biology.

The principal aim of this role is to implement a high-throughput nanopore transcriptome skimming protocol suitable for profiling meiofauna diversity. In this protocol, we synthesize, amplify, and index large pools of full length cDNAs from 100s-1000s of specimens. These pools are then loaded on Oxford Nanopore Technologies instruments for massively multiplex long-read sequencing. With even shallow depths of sequencing (50-100K reads/library), the transcriptomes assembled from these libraries provide rich and cost-effective sources of phylogenetic and species delimitation data from 100s of orthologous markers, including most or all mtDNA protein-coding genes and 18S and 28S nuclear rRNAs.

You will be trained to implement this protocol manually in the first instance and will work in concert with Dr. Laumer to develop and operate a high-throughput implementation of the protocol on the NHM’s liquid handling robot infrastructure. This protocol will be crucial to large-scale meiofauna surveys, both domestically and abroad, which our research team will carry out during the position, and which you will be a core participant in.

In later years of your role, you will work with Dr. Laumer to implement an alternative scaling strategy suited to profiling entire meiofaunal communities of 10,000s-100,000s of specimens, exploiting in-situ molecular biology and combinatorial split-pool techniques. You will carry out experiments designed to test various fixation strategies to maintain RNA integrity, key to sampling in disparate areas of the globe. You will also maintain cultures of various meiofauna species (e.g. rotifers, nematodes, annelids, flatworms) which will be used as workhorses in the validation of the transcriptome skimming protocol.

You may also learn and implement other related molecular protocols core to our research, for instance used for assembly, annotation, and chromosomal scaffolding of reference genomes from individual meiofauna, or for genome skimming from historical museum specimens. This role represents an excellent training opportunity for a detail-oriented wet-lab scientist interested in developing skills in sample preparation, amplification techniques, long-read sequencing, and creative protocol design and scaling.
Your creative input as a full lab member should be reflected in co-authorship on publications, making this role suitable for those interested in careers in both academia and industry. You will develop close co-working relationships within our group as well as with other researchers and staff in the NHM Genomics research theme and the core molecular biology labs.

Finally, you will be asked to take on some basic responsibilities of lab management, i.e. maintaining stocks of regularly used reagents, maintaining risk assessments, training students and visitors in standard protocols.

Main Responsibilities

• Working closely with other members of the Laumer group, you will learn to implement an established nanopore transcriptome skimming protocol, first using experimental models, then on wild meiofauna. Initially this will be a manual protocol, but in time you will have an opportunity to receive training needed to implement on liquid-handling robots.
• You will follow established protocols to start and maintain cultures of several lab-friendly species of freshwater micro-invertebrate.
• You will follow prewritten draft protocols designed to test optimal conditions with the following goals:
• Finding an optimal fixative for ambient-temperature sample storage maintaining RNA integrity.
• Finding conditions for in-situ reverse transcription and ligation on different microinvertebrate models.
• Implementing in situ split-pool combinatorial barcoding of meiofauna cDNAs, building on the conditions established in prior experiments.
• You will learn to implement other core lab protocols, first on model systems, then on wild-caught species, such as:
• Picogram input multimodal sequencing, a technique for genomic DNA and cDNA amplification used in genome assembly of meiofauna.
• Pore-C, a nanopore-flavoured version of HiC used for genome scaffolding.
• Historical DNA library preparation, used for genome skimming of natural history collections.
• Working with other senior lab members, you will train new group members, collaborators, and occasional visitors.
• You will maintain inventories of specimens and frequently used reagents, and take responsibility for day-to-day lab operations, e.g. reagent ordering, risk assessment databasing, training of new lab members.

About you

• We are seeking a Masters Research Assistant with experience in wet-lab genomics protocol implementation. No postdoctoral experience is required.
• Attention to detail, organizational ability, creative thinking, interest in cutting-edge genomics techniques, and ability to design rigorous, reproducible experiments are more important than prior training.
• This said, previous experience with liquid handling robots, microinvertebrates, or single-cell assays would be particularly valuable in this role.
• The role is principally in-person at the South Kensington campus, with limited potential for hybrid working.

Thriving at the Museum: the way we work
We are proud to work at the Museum and have identified the qualities we all need to embody to reach our shared ambition. This sits alongside the Museum’s values and forms the framework for the way we work.

Find out more here

What we offer

• 27.5 days holiday plus 8 bank holidays (full time equivalent)
• Generous defined contribution Natural History Museum Pension Scheme (employer contribution 4 - 10%)
• Season ticket, bicycle and rental loan
• Life insurance
• Free admission to our exhibitions and many other paid exhibitions at museums, galleries and institutions across London and the UK.
• Staff discount at our Museum shops and cafes
• We offer a wide variety of training initiatives and opportunities to build skills. Investing in staff development is important to us, and we are ambitious about helping staff to grow and fulfil their potential.
• Affordable membership to the Civil Service Sports Council which offers a range of benefits including an extensive list of special offers and reduced entry fees at a selection of cinema chains, theme parks, theatres, retailers and supermarkets. It also provides entry to up to 300 English Heritage sites and other national treasures. For more details, visit https://www.cssc.co.uk
• Membership to our Sports and Social Association (for a small fee), which includes access to our in-house gym and clubs such as football, softball, table tennis and tennis and classes in Middle Eastern dance, yoga and Tai Chi