This action funds a third year extension for a Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2002. The Fellow will complete studies using the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance factor as a model system to understand the general mechanisms that control alternative splicing of exons and the underlying principles that determine whether a sequence is included or omitted from a message RNA during protein synthesis. These mechanisms are important in development, tissue specificity determination, and apoptosis in eukaryotes.
