This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial biology for FY2004. 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 "Analysis of how microorganisms survive while starving." When starved, eukaryotic cells use multiple strategies to survive. One of these is macroautophagy, a process by which the contents of the cell are recycled. This process has been characterized in the microbe Dictyostelium discoideum. The goal of this project is to identify factors involved in microbial macroautophagy.
