Abstract DBI 9750255 Gail Rocheleau This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biosciences Related to the Environment for 1997. This fellowship provides an opportunity for the Fellow to gain additional scientific training beyond the doctoral degree and to pursue innovative and imaginative into the fundamental mechanisms underlying the interactions between organisms and their environment at the molecular, cellular, organismal, population, community and/or ecosystem level in any area of biology supported by the Directorate for Biological Sciences of the National Science Foundation. Each fellowship supports a research and training plan to be carried out in a sponsoring laboratory. The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled "Molecular analysis of evolutionary and environmental relationships of plant and animal viruses." Amino acids and nucleotides important for plant viral RNA-protein complex formation are being identified using biochemical and genetic methods. The role of the environment in virus evolution is being assessed by biochemical approaches that examine relationships between two viruses in the Alphavirus superfamily and by constructing an evolutionary tree.
