Research Technician-Assistant

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The Research Technician as a part of a Resnick Sustainability Institute at Caltech-funded project. The project goal is to develop bacterial sensors with the ability to communicate with novel sentinel plants as a readout for changes in environmental conditions or changes in the rhizosphere. This individual will be supervised by a post-doctoral fellowin Elliot Meyerowitz's research group and will work collaboratively with members of the larger funded group.

• Planting, growing, maintaining, and collecting seeds for plant lines. Perform plant transformations and maintain plant stocks including selection, genotyping, growth, and seed collection.
• The experiments in the lab will vary over time. They can be divided into three primary categories. First, using microscopy to image different parts of the plant depending on growing conditions. Second, harvesting tissue samples from the plants, processing them for quantitative experiments using different kinetic assays. Third, phenotyping the plant growth by taking measurements of size or plant organs and tissues, counting leaves and flowers, and recording observations of visible changes in plant growth.
• Additional lab functions such as molecular cloning and maintenance of recombinant stocks.
• Assist lab manager to coordinate ordering of materials for the completion of the experiments for the project. Perform basic ordering functions in Techmart such as primer ordering.

• Bachelor's degree in Plant Biology, Molecular Biology, or related field.
• Ability to perform molecular techniques such as PCR, molecular cloning, plasmid cloning, plasmid isolation, and nucleic acid electrophoresis.
• Strong organizational and data collection skills, including the ability to organize results for presentation and publication as needed.

• Past experience working with plants in a laboratory setting is desirable.
• Experience with wide field light microscopy.
• Previous experience imaging samples with confocal laser scanning microscopy.
• Previous experience with plant work, including growing and maintaining plants stocks, is desired.
• Previous experience with histological techniques such as tissue embedding, tissue sectioning, tissue staining and nucleic acid in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry.

• Resume.