This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY2001. The fellowship supports research and training at the postdoctoral level at the intersection of biology and the informational, computational, mathematical, and statistical sciences. The goal of the fellowship is to provide training to a young scientist in preparation for a career in biological informatics in which research and education will be integrated. There is an increasing need for training in biological informatics at all occupational levels, and it is expected that Fellows trained through these fellowships will play important roles in training of the future workforce.
The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled "From genome to gene expression: Mapping and understanding genetic networks in Dictyostelium development." Upon starvation, Dictyostelium amoeba communicate, sort, and adhere to each other to form ``tissues''. This transformation, resulting in a resistant spore, utilizes all the mechanisms crucial for normal development of multicellular organisms. Promoters, repressors, and the architecture of genetic networks involved in development in Dictyostelium are being explored using both genomic and gene expression data and mathematical modeling.
