M a x P l a n c k I n s t i t u t e f o r D e v e l o p m e n t a l B i o l o g y • T ü b i n g e n • G e r m a n y

Help us change the face of genomics!

We are looking for motivated team players to join our group at the Max Planck Institute, one

of the world's most successful organizations in basic research. We are studying a range of

biological questions, many revolving around plant and microbial genomes. The expertise of

your future colleagues ranges from algorithm development and computational genomics to

wet lab biology and field experiments, generating a highly interactive and interdisciplinary

work environment. Many of our projects take advantage of the advanced in-house

sequencing center providing direct and early-stage access to the latest long read

technologies (Pacific Biosciences Sequel, Oxford Nanopore MinION) as well as more

established Illumina short read platforms. We use these to assemble hundreds of genomes

and complex genome mixtures, and genotype thousands of individuals. Of course, we use

these technologies also for functional studies of, for example, epigenetic landscapes and

gene expression profiles. Read more on our website at http://weigelworld.org.


Join us as a Computational Biologist

You think the era of draft genomes should

come to an end? That populations can't be

represented with just a single reference

genome? That functional data are as

important as recording genetic variation?

Then join us to generate new golden

standard resources for entire genera

(Arabidopsis, Capsella), tackle complex

genomes (grapevine, hops), or assemble

metagenomes with the latest mix of

sequencing technologies. Or integrate

functional data to understand the green

immune system or allele-specific

expression patterns.


Join us as (Bio)informatician

You think graph-based methods are best

for comparative genomics? That

metagenome assemblers should deal

effortlessly with uneven sequence

coverage and both short and long reads?

Then join our development team, design

your own (metagenome) long read

assembler to facilitate the understanding

of ecologically important microbial

communities. Help us to produce methods

that can deal with thousands of reference

genomes and advance our comparative

efforts with the latest graph-based

approaches.


What's our (and soon your) mission?

The long-term goal of our research is to understand both the molecular mechanisms and the

evolution of adaptive traits. To this end, we are using both phenotype-first and genotype-
first approaches to identify genetic variants with a potential role in local, regional or global

adaptation. Additionally, we aim to develop tools and community resources, such as the 1001

Arabidopsis thaliana Genomes (http://1001genomes.org) project, that help other researchers

world wide to answer important evolutionary questions.


Interested?

There are exciting opportunities to perform cutting-edge work in our department right now.

So if you want to be part of our team as PhD student or Postdoc, send us a letter that

outlines which research topics you are particularly interested in, and why your qualifications

make you a good fit for us.


Detlef Weigel <weigel@tue.mpg.de>

Director, MPI for Developmental Biology