Ryszard Kierzek

This postdoctoral position is in the Department of Structural Chemistry and Biology of Nucleic Acids at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences in Poznań. The project is led by Prof. Ryszard Kierzek and focuses on how RNA modifications alter RNA structure and function, with special attention to natural RNAs and in vitro transcribed vaccine mRNAs. The research is centred on modified nucleotides that are highly relevant in RNA biology and RNA therapeutics, including pseudouridine, N1-methylpseudouridine, 5-methoxyuridine and 5-methylcytidine. The project aims to generate thermodynamic parameters for RNA folding involving these modifications and to incorporate them into the RNAstructure program so that RNA folding can be predicted more accurately for modified natural RNAs and vaccine-type RNAs. The successful candidate will work on a combined programme of nucleic acid chemistry and structural analysis. This includes the synthesis of modified phosphoramidites and oligonucleotides, thermodynamic measurements on modified duplexes and non-helical motifs, and structural probing of large RNA fragments and vaccine-related RNAs. The work also extends to small RNA fragments studied by NMR and crystallographic methods to understand the structural effects behind the stabilising influence of these modifications. The position sits within a research environment linking synthetic chemistry, RNA biophysics, and structural biology. The advertised work connects fundamental questions about RNA folding and modification-dependent stability with applications to viral and vaccine RNAs, including SARS-CoV-2-related subgenomic RNA and influenza mRNA targets. The postholder will also contribute to manuscript preparation and to supervision of students and doctoral researchers. Overall, this is a postdoctoral opportunity to study modified RNA thermodynamics, structure prediction, and experimental validation in a specialist nucleic-acid research group.