This action funds an NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2008. The fellowship supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow who also presents a plan to broaden participation in biology. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to Beverly C. Ajie is "The developmental and evolutionary origins of phenotypic modularity in threespine stickleback." The host institution for this research is the University of Oregon and the sponsoring scientists are Drs. Steven Arnold and William Cresko.
The complexity of organisms, how their many physical and behavioral traits come together to produce a functional whole, has fascinated ecologists and evolutionary biologists alike for hundreds of years. Nevertheless, the origins and implications of organismal complexity, or modularity, as is it often referred to, are not yet well understood. This project is examining how the internal processes of development that unfold over organisms' lifetimes and the external process of natural selection interact to give rise to modularity. The simulation modeling makes it possible to 'observe' the evolution of modularly, which in reality occurs very slowly, in just days. The experimental work leverages the unique biology and molecular genetic tools of the threespine stickleback fish system, to better understand the developmental and genetic bases of modularity.
The training objectives for this research include techniques in molecular genetics, genomics, population and quantitative genetic theory, and computer programming. Furthermore, because organisms' complexity or modularity is an important determinant of their future evolutionary trends, the findings of this work will bear on some of today's most pressing scientific issues including genetically modified organisms, biodiversity conservation, targeted drug therapy, and the evolution of antibiotic resistance.
