Dear Dr.

XXX,

I am writing to apply for a postdoctoral position in your laboratory.

My core interest is to understand the regulatory network involved in driving

cellular state changes during stem cell differentiation and dysregulations within the
network that lead to associated cancers. My hypothesis is that during oncogenic
transformation, differentiated cells acquire some quasi-stem cell state through
tweaking of the inherent pluripotency network. In the pursuit of my interest, I have
gained substantial conceptual and technical experience in in vivo, in vitro and in
silico based experimental approaches during my doctoral research and in my
current postdoctoral position.

In my current research, I have utilized in vitro and in silico based approaches to

decipher mechanism involved in cancer progression in medulloblastoma and
melanoma. Particularly in medulloblastoma, I have utilized patient RNA-seq data
from ICGC PedBrain tumor project to determine differentially expressed long non-
coding RNA (lncRNA) signature associated with medulloblastoma and its subtypes
compared to normal cerebellum. Using WGCNA and transcriptional inference
algorithms, I have identified medulloblastoma subgroup specific lncRNA and
protein coding gene networks. I have utilized random forest based approach to
identify lncRNA markers that would improve medulloblastoma classification, and
LASSO based Cox regression approach to identify medulloblastoma lncRNA
prognostic signature. This work is under preparation for submission to a peer-
reviewed journal. In my recently published work focusing on melanoma, I utilized
a combination of RNA-seq based approach to identify transcriptome wide
destability induced by candidate microRNA overexpression, to improve detection
of contextual microRNA targets. Previously in my doctoral research, I used an in vivo
(chicken) model to decipher the gene regulatory network driving neural cell
maturation in early spinal cord progenitors and used mathematical modeling based
approach to understand the dynamic behavior of signaling and transcriptional
factor interaction.

For my future career, I wish to exploit my combinatorial skills in in vitro, in vivo and
in silico based approaches to address challenging questions in the field of neural
differentiation and cancers. I am enticed by your group’s focus on stem cell
differentiation and use of human and mouse model to address the question of
pluripotency and cell fate decision. As per your two advertisements, one for
molecular biologist and second for a bioinformatician for sequencing data analysis;
I wish to apply for a combinatorial position as I would like use both in vitro and in
silico based analysis in my project. The techniques and concepts acquired in your
lab will definitely advance my research goals and help me attain independent
position to further my career.

I am attaching my CV for your consideration and I thank you for your time for the
same.
Regards,

xxxx