NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2016

Lutz Holly L, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

Postdoctoral Fellow: Holly Lutz Proposal Number: 1611948 This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2016, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow to increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. The title of the research plan for this fellowship to Holly Lutz is "The Bat Microbiome Project." The host institutions for this fellowship are the University of Chicago (primary), Argonne National Laboratory, and the Field Museum of Natural History, and the sponsoring scientists are Jack Gilbert and Bruce Patterson. The goal of this research is to study the 'microbiome' of bats, i.e., microbes that live in and on bats. The Fellow is focusing on microbial symbionts (bacteria and viruses) of African bats, establishing baseline data for this important and vulnerable group. The Fellow is combining these microbial data with information about the evolutionary history and ecology of each bat species to assess what factors drive patterns of bat-microbe associations. The Fellow is also using information about the cutaneous microbiome of particular bat species to examine whether microbes indirectly influence rates of malarial parasite transmission by affecting the behavior of ectoparasitic vectors (e.g. bat flies). By working closely with natural history museums, both in the US and abroad, the Fellow's research is both relying on, and producing, data in the form of vouchered specimens and cryogenically preserved materials derived from bats. The Fellow is receiving training in the latest metagenomic sequencing and bioinformatic methods. The project is also fundamentally international and collaborative in nature. One of the sponsoring institutions, the Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH) in Chicago, has a long history of supporting scientific capacity building in Africa, and the Fellow's Bat Microbiome Project involves the participation and training of many undergraduate and graduate students from African universities. Some of these students will receive advanced training in the US at the FMNH, and will interact with high school and undergraduate volunteers and interns at the museum. In summers, the Fellow is also mentoring high school students from underrepresented groups who will work on some aspect of the Bat Microbiome Project at the FMNH, thereby helping them prepare for academic pursuits in STEM fields. Students are learning about the fundamentals of host-microbe interactions through the lens of the Bat Microbiome Project, as they develop and execute independent projects related to this research.