We are seeking to appoint an outstanding individual with PhD training in structural biology to reveal the function of unconventional kinetochore proteins in Trypanosoma brucei, the causative agent of sleeping sickness. Although it was widely believed that all eukaryotes would have a conserved set of kinetochore proteins, we recently identified 20 uncharacterized kinetochore proteins (named KKT1–20) in Trypanosoma brucei and discovered that they constitute unconventional kinetochores specific to kinetoplastids, a group of evolutionarily-divergent eukaryotes (Akiyoshi and Gull, Cell 2014, Nerusheva and Akiyoshi Open Biol 2016). We are currently characterizing these KKT proteins using various techniques including cell biology, bioinformatics, advanced microscopy, biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology.

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