This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY 2005. 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 the future workforce.
The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled "Variation in and evolution of the regulatory sequence and expression profile of a sea urchin developmental gene." This research investigates how polymorphisms in the promoter (cis-regulatory sequence) of the sea urchin developmental gene endo16 affect when and where endo16 is expressed and how natural selection on endo16 expression affects endo16 promoter polymorphisms. One endo16 promoter allele has been intensively analyzed, leading to a computational model of the promoter. However, over 100 endo16 promoter polymorphisms have been observed. The model will be used to predict how the polymorphisms affect expression, test the predictions by measuring expression from multiple alleles, and explore the dynamics of the polymorphisms under natural selection on expression. This research promises to contribute significantly to the on-going synthesis of developmental biology and evolutionary genetics.
