Senior Research Assistant - Neuronal Innervation of Osteoarthritic and Aging Joints

Summary

The Restoring Joint Health and Function to Reduce Pain (RE-JOIN) consortium is a new NIH-funded initiative that brings scientists from various US-based institutions, including Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), together to better understand the origins of joint pain in diseases such as osteoarthritis. At BCM, the RE-JOIN team consists of five research groups, including the Lee lab, that have joined forces to tackle this research question. To help us characterize how neuronal input into the knee joint changes with age and with disease, we are recruiting a research assistant who has strong work ethics, and has excellent interpersonal and organizational skills.

The Sr. Research Assistant will work as part of a large, interdisciplinary team, so the successful candidate must have strong communicative and interpersonal skills. Their primary tasks will be to handle the mouse husbandry (mouse breeding, genotyping, and documentation), perform histology, and to assist, or perform, the surgeries to induce osteoarthritis. Depending on the needs of the project, these tasks may expand to also include neuronal mapping assays, such as viral-based retrograde tracing. The Sr. Research Assistant will be trained on specific research techniques within the group.

For more information about our lab, please visit https://www.bcm.edu/research/faculty-labs/brendan-lee-lab

Job Duties

• Animal husbandry: maintain transgenic mouse colony, perform PCR-based genotyping assays, monitor breeding activities, and keep detailed records in the lab's database.
• Assist (or perform) surgeries in mice to induce osteoarthritis and monitor disease progression afterwards.
• Collect mouse tissues for basic histology on fixed tissues, including tissue sectioning and staining.
• Perform a broad range of cell, molecular biology and biochemistry assays, including DNA-, RNA-, and protein extraction from cells and tissues, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, western blots, real time PCR, etc.
• Maintain careful and detailed documentation of experiments, collected data, and analysis in lab notebooks. This task will require a working knowledge of excel spreadsheets.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a Basic Science or related field.
• Four years of relevant experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's Degree in a basic science or related field.
• Two to three years of experience working with rodent research models.
• Experience with supporting and/or performing rodent surgeries.
• Experience performing immunostaining and histology.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Background in genetics, molecular biology, and neuroscience.

Baylor College of Medicine requires employees to be fully vaccinated -subject to approved exemptions-against vaccine-preventable diseases including, but not limited to, COVID-19 and influenza.

Baylor College of Medicine is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action/Equal Access Employer.

13887

CA; SN