Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Microbial Biology for FY 2004

Rauch Erik M, Charlestown MA

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial biology for FY2004. The fellowship supports training and research on the basic biology of protozoan, microalgal, fungal, archaeal, bacterial and viral species that are not generally considered to be model organisms. Further, it provides opportunities for recent doctoral recipients to obtain additional training in microbial biology, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond the research experiences during the undergraduate and graduate training. These fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including foreign locations. The research and training plan is entitled "The effect of environment on microbial diversity." Diversity is a fundamental property of microbial populations and important to understanding their ecological role. This research involves modeling spatial and temporal patterns of microbial diversity to understand what shapes this diversity. In particular, it investigates the effect of living in different types of habitats on the diversity and genetic structure of microbial populations by studying the scaling properties of genealogical trees of populations and the dynamic behavior of these trees, using both analytic results and dynamic simulations, and comparing these results with experimental sequence data in Burkholderia cepacia, a widespread bacterium which is found in many different ecological niches and is also economically and epidemiologically important.