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 "A novel antagonistic mechanism in plant-associated microbes." An intriguing finding that the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae can co-opt the fungal heterokaryon incompatibility (HI) pathway and trigger a fungal programmed cell death pathway is being further investigated. This project examines a protein in P. syringae (Phc) that has homology to the Neurospora crassa protein Het-c, which controls HI. The generality of this phenomenon is being examined by studying the the effect of phc on various fungal species, the fitness advantage conferred by phc to P. syringae, and investigating if Phc is regulated by the type three secretion system.
