Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology for FY 2009

O'Fallon Brendan D, Salt Lake City UT

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2009. The fellowship supports a research and training plan entitled "Detecting natural selection from the structure of genealogies" for Brendan O'Fallon. The host institution for this research is the University of Washington - Seattle, and the sponsoring scientist is Mary Kuhner. Genetic sequences sampled from a population contain a wealth of information about the population's demographic and evolutionary history. Extracting this information requires accurate models of how evolutionary forces like natural selection combine with demographic processes to create patterns of variation in genetic sequences. One of the most common forms of selection is the continual purging of slightly deleterious mutations from functionally important regions of the genome. This research characterizes how 'purifying' selection affects the genealogical relationships among sequences sampled from a population. These techniques can then be used to identify genetic regions that are being conserved by natural selection, thus aiding empirical biologists in locating functionally important elements in genomes. An important part of this work involves the development of accurate and efficient software to implement the mathematical theory and allow its application to real genetic data. The program will allow researchers with little mathematical background to estimate important population parameters in any population from which a sample of genetic sequences can be extracted. Training goals include analytical mathematics, computational statistics, and use and development of informatics tools associated with analysis of large data sets.