This action funds an NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY2003. The goal of the fellowship is to increase the participation of minority scientists at the postdoctoral level and to prepare them for positions of scientific leadership in academia and industry. To attain this goal, the fellowship provides opportunities for postdoctoral training and research of the highest quality to recent doctoral recipients. It is expected that Fellows supported through these fellowships will play important roles in training of the future workforce.
The research and training plan is entitled " A structural investigation of macromolecular complexes determining mating-type in yeast using X-ray crystallography." The objective is to determine the 3-D structure of the MATa1/MCM1/DNA complex in Saccharomyces cerevesiae and to identify the role of the chameleon sequence in the previously determined structure of this complex. The methods used here are site-directed mutagenesis and X-ray crystallography. The structural information is expected to identify general principles about protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interactions that are involved in the combinatorial control of gene expression.
