Mots-Clés

GWAS genetics database

Description

JOB DESCRIPTION

The Statistical Genetics unit within the Department of Computational Biology at the Institut Pasteur seeks a motivated junior research engineer. The successful candidate will participate in an ongoing collaborative project aiming at deepening our understanding of human genetics.

To this day, a vast number of GWAS (Genome Wide association Studies that is an analysis mapping genetic variations affecting a trait) has been performed and their results made available to the research community. For instance the EBI GWAS catalog contains as many as 10000 GWAS results for a variety of traits going from psychiatric illnesses to cholesterol dosage. Here at the Institut Pasteur statistical genetic group, we are especially interested in pleiotropy (i.e. the fact a variant can affect several traits at once). We recently built several computational tools including a website to study the effect of variants across phenotypes.

Currently, our database contains 154 GWAS results for European ancestry individuals. We would like to enrich our database in two ways: increase the number of traits available, include traits measured on individuals of other ancestry (African, Asian, ...).

The main topic of this short contract will be to contribute to this effort. The successful applicant will be asked to (with the help of the supervising team):

1. Download and curate GWAS publicly available results

2. Apply and maintain a cleaning pipeline on the downloaded results

3. Make the results available on the jass.pasteur.fr website

The position mostly has a computational component with a particular emphasis on scripting. 

QUALIFICATIONS

The selected candidate should have computational skills. He/she should be qualified with at least one programming language (e.g. bash, Python, R). The candidate will typically hold a master in Bioinformatics, Computer Science or other relevant disciplines with a quantitative background. Practical experience working with genetic data sets is desirable but not necessary. We are a team committed to foster a fair, inclusive and diverse work environment. Diversity has been scientifically established as a key factor to improve scientific objectivity. Hence, all applicants will be evaluated solely based on qualification regardless of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race or disability.