This action funds an NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2004. 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 "Elucidating the mechanistic differences of partial versus complete degradation by the proteasome." This research investigates how certain transcription factors are involved in regulating the immune response. The proteasome is the cell machinery that activates the NFkB pathway by truncating a protein to its active form. The proteasome also completely degrades an inhibitor of the pathway. The focus of the research is to determine how the proteosome completely degrades one protein but only partially degrades the other.
The Fellow has identified training goals in biochemical and biophysical techniques to complement her background in cell biology.
