Salary: £39,000 - £42,150 per annum depending on qualifications and experience. A starting salary of £40,100 is guaranteed for candidates who can evidence their PhD certificate on appointment.
Contract: 36 months, full-time
Location: John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK
Closing date: 26 October 2026
Reference: 1006209

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Wilkinson Group at the John Innes Centre, working in collaboration with the Hutchings lab, on a project titled: Global activation of silent and cryptic biosynthetic pathways in Streptomyces species.

About the John Innes Centre:
The John Innes Centre is an independent, international centre of excellence in plant and microbial sciences. We nurture a creative, curiosity-led approach to answering fundamental questions in bioscience, and translate that knowledge into societal benefits. Our strategic vision, Healthy Plants, Healthy People, Healthy Planet, sets out our ambitious long-term goals for the game changing impact of our science globally.
Our employees enjoy access to state-of-the-art technology and a diverse range of specialist training opportunities, including support for leadership and management. Click here to find out more about working at the John Innes Centre.

About the Wilkinson Group:
We are an inter-disciplinary team that includes chemists, biochemists and micro/molecular biologists who work on the discovery, biosynthesis, and biosynthetic engineering of microbial specialised metabolites, and on understanding the role these metabolites play in the environment. We focus on anti-infective molecules and additionally study their molecular targets & mechanisms of action, and the immunity mechanisms employed by their producer organisms.

Project background:
Streptomyces specialised metabolites form the basis of two thirds of clinically used antibiotics but only 3% of the specialised metabolite pathways encoded in their genomes have been matched to molecules. The majority are “silent” which means they can be identified in genome sequences, but they are not expressed under standard laboratory growth conditions. Streptomyces bacteria have also been found to contain “cryptic” biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) which cannot be predicted by similarity search-based tools such as antiSMASH and likely encode new molecules. Regulation of silent and cryptic gene clusters is complex and multilevel, and this makes it extremely challenging to understand.

The project:
We are taking a high-level approach to activate multiple silent and cryptic gene clusters in Streptomyces bacteria through the manipulation of global regulators that are highly conserved. The project will focus on a family of highly conserved transcription factors which appear to be at or near the top of a hierarchy of regulators that coordinate the lifecycle of Streptomyces with specialised metabolism: our preliminary data show that manipulation of these TFs actives the expression of multiple silent and cryptic BGCs in Streptomyces venezuelae, leading to the production of new molecules.

The role:
The successful candidate will isolate and structurally characterise new specialised metabolites produced by a panel of engineered Streptomyces strains and link them to BGCs. Building on these data you will delineate the biosynthesis of the new molecules and investigate their bioactivity in a range of biochemical and cellular assays.

The ideal candidate:
You will have a PhD in Natural Products Chemistry with in-depth knowledge of natural product isolation and structure elucidation, especially when working with small quantities of material, and of metabolomics and molecular networking.
You will have a proven ability to perform research and develop novel ideas in natural products chemistry and discovery. Experience in delineating natural product biosynthetic pathways and a proven record in scientific writing are highly desirable.