Postdoctoral Scholar – Evolutionary Cell Biology

This position has an initial appointment of 2 years.

Location - This role is hybrid with a mix of remote and in-person work at North Campus Edmonton.

About the Role
The Dacks Lab is seeking a highly motivated Postdoctoral Scholar for a research project investigating the pre-LECA evolution of adaptin protein complexes using Ancestral Protein Reconstruction (APR) and the model organism Dictyostelium discoideum.

This position offers an exciting opportunity to combine bioinformatics and experimental evolutionary cell biology to uncover how early vesicular trafficking machinery evolved.
Work Environment
The Dacks Lab is located in the Department of Medicine (with ties to Biological Sciences) at the University of Alberta. The lab offers access to high-performance computing (Compute Canada), dedicated wet-bench facilities, and core advanced microscopy infrastructure.
This position offers an exciting opportunity to combine bioinformatics and experimental evolutionary cell biology to uncover how early vesicular trafficking machinery evolved.

• Perform Ancestral Protein Reconstruction (APR) on adaptin subunit complexes.
• Express reconstructed ancestral proteins in Dictyostelium to directly assay their cellular function and membrane trafficking roles.
• Collaborate within a multidisciplinary team and utilize state-of-the-art computational and cell biology infrastructure.
  

• Ph.D. in Cell Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, or a related field within the last 5 years
• Background in molecular cell biology, membrane trafficking, or bioinformatics/phylogenetics.
• Strong record of scientific communication and publication.
• Preference will be given to candidates with expertise (demonstrated by first author publications) in molecular cell biological and microscopical techniques using the Dictyostelium discoideum model system.

Application Instructions

Interested candidates should submit the following for their application:

• Curriculum vitae including list of publications
• Cover letter describing their research experience, interests and fit with the project
• The names of up to three academic references should be provided, but letters are not required at this stage

Use of AI in writing applications documents is strongly discouraged. The postdoctoral position is NSERC funded for 2 years and candidates with experience with molecular cell biology of Dictyostelium will be prioritized.

The position can start as soon as November 1, 2026 however, the search will continue until a suitable candidate is found.

This position has a comprehensive benefits package.

The terms and conditions of this appointment are governed by the Collective Agreement between the Board of Governors of the University of Alberta and the Postdoctoral Fellows Association of the University of Alberta

Further information on the research is below

The endomembrane system is a hallmark of eukaryotic cells and one of the key cellular systems to be understood in the prokaryote to eukaryote transition. The Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) is reconstructed to have possessed a sophisticated set of endomembrane compartments and vesicular trafficking machinery

1 )This complexity evolved via an iterative process of gene duplications and co-evolution from a primordial set of vesicle formation and fusion proteins to the organelle-specific paralogues present today

2) However, the details of events, function of preduplicated proteins, and importantly how novel function of those paralogues arose are unknown, and unknowable, by the gold-standard methods of comparative genomics and phylogenetics alone. Ancestral protein reconstruction uses bioinformatics to infer the sequence of ancient proteins and evolutionary cell biology to directly assay their cellular function. The Dacks lab has used this approach to address the pre-LECA evolution of the Arf GPTases.

3) Here we aim to use the same approach but with Dictyostelium as a model system to examine the evolution of the adaptin protein complexes. The Dacks Lab has previously used Dictyostelium to examine evolutionary cell biological questions

4) We are excited to make even more in depth use of this model system.

Adaptins are heterotetrameric complexes that recruit cargo into transport vesicles and the cellular functions and locations of each are well established in animals, yeast, plants and Dictyostelium. This set of proteins has also been well-studied in the context of eukaryogenesis. The postdoctoral project will be to perform Ancestral Protein Reconstruction on adaptin subunits and test their function in Dictyostelium cells.

Dr. Dacks is also a Research Scientist with the Czech Academy of Sciences and an Honorary Professor at University College London. The lab has access to super-computing capabilities through Compute Canada and dedicated wet-bench facilities, as well as access to core microscopy infrastructure. The research group comprises 4-8 lab members at any given time ranging from undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral fellows.

1. Richards, T. A. et al. Reconstructing the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes. PLoS Biol. 22, e3002917–e3002917 (2024).
2. Dacks, J. B., Poon, P. P. & Field, M. C. Phylogeny of endocytic components yields insight into the process of nonendosymbiotic organelle evolution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 105, 588–593 (2008).
3. Alves, M., Sivia, M., Záhonová, K., Jackson, C. L. & Dacks, J. B. Ancestral Protein Reconstruction of a membrane trafficking GTPase uncovers unanticipated properties of the ancestral protein and of modern Arf1 GTPases. bioRxiv https://doi.org/doi:%20https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.27.684887
4. Manna, P. T., Barlow, L. D., Ramirez-Macias, I., Herman, E. K. & Dacks, J. B. Endosomal vesicle fusion machinery is involved with the contractile vacuole in Dictyostelium discoideum. J. Cell Sci. 136, (2023).

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