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 "A bioinformatics approach to determining the relationship between adaptive evolution and the rate of evolution on a genome-wide scale in Drosophila." This research uses computer simulations to model adaptive protein evolution in the context of the coalescent. Genome annotation and population genomic data from Drosophila is being used to systematically test hypotheses and estimate the extent to which directional selection shapes genome evolution. This cross-disciplinary genomics project integrates molecular evolution, population genetics, and computational biology to get definitive answers to longstanding questions in evolutionary biology.
