Seeking for a postdoctoral fellow to work on marine sponge diseases

We seek for an MSCA postdoctoral fellow to take a leading role in exploring marine sponge- symbioses in health and disease. Much research attention has been devoted to study sponge symbioses in stable, healthy contexts while much less is known how such interactions will fare under conditions of stress and disease. Owing to climate change, the environmental context of host-microbe interactions is changing, which will have impacts on their stability and functionality. We are interested to identify the stressors and tipping points that cause shifts from symbiotic to dysbiotic/disease states and in experimental approaches to reverse this pattern. We are further interested to identify and characterize the mechanisms and molecules underpinning such shifts between health and disease. The use of marine sponge models that are amenable to experimentation is considered an advantage.