This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial biology for FY2003. The fellowship supports training and research on the basic biology of protozoan, microalgal, fungal, archaeal, bacterial and viral species that are not generally considered to be model organisms. Further, it provides opportunities for recent doctoral recipients to obtain additional training in microbial biology, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond the research experiences during the undergraduate and graduate training. These fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including foreign locations.
The research and training plan is entitled "Iron and nitrogren metabolism in a coastal diatom." These studies use the pubically-available genome sequence for the coastal diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana to explore the cellular and molecular basis for the relationship between iron and nitrogen metabolism in this organism and in the plankton community in coastal upwelling regions. Patterns of gene expression under various iron and nitrogen growth conditions are being determined using DNA microarrays.
