This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial Biology for FY2003. 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 "Microbial energy sharing during pyrite formation." Pyrite formation from iron sulfide and hydrogen sulfide has been hypothesized as an early microbial energy metabolism but only recently has it been associated with microbial activity. This research uses syntrophic enrichment cultures that catalyze this reaction coupled with methane formation to characterize the nature of this novel sulfide transformation and the spatial organization of the partner microbes.
