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 "An investigation of metal detoxification genes in the microbial community from a hydrothermal vent." A unique community of Proteobacteria is associated with the dorsal surface of Alvinella pompejana, a worm that colonizes deep-sea hydrothermal vents. To investigate this microbial community, 140 Mb of DNA sequence was generated along with a customized annotation pipeline and database. This research exploits this resource to test the hypothesis that Proteobacteria detoxify metals in the hydrothermal vent ecosystem.
The training objectives are to learn computational methods for data-mining and protein function prediction, including database development and management, hidden Markov model searches, machine learning and molecular modeling. The acquisition of additional computational biology experience will complement the Fellow's current repertoire of microbiology and molecular biology and prepare him for the challenges of interdisciplinary biocomplexity research and education.
