This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY 2006. 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 Comparative Genomic Approach to Characterize the Early Evolution of Gene Duplicates with Emphasis on the Origin of Novel Genes." The recent genomic boom has offered unprecedented access to entire sets of gene duplicates within genomes, providing an opportunity to test predictions of gene-duplication theory in diverse species. Pair-wise reciprocal comparisons of closely related genomes are being employed to identify the ancestral copy of duplicated genes, assess the frequencies of different types of gene duplications, assess the relative contribution of diverse genomic sequences to the formation of novel genes and elucidate the importance of different mechanisms of gene duplication.
The Fellow is receiving training in computational and software skills to develop tools for large-scale bioinformatics research. The aim is to design and manage a comprehensive public database characterizing evolutionarily young gene-duplicates across diverse genomes in order to facilitate further research by other scientists.
