This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2009. The fellowship supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to Mary M. Guisinger is "Using plant plastid genomes as the model system to develop bioinformatic tools for characterizing genome evolution." This research is being conducted at the University of California-Berkeley under the sponsorships of Drs. Chelsea Specht and Rasmus Nielsen.
Biology is moving into the post-genomics era. In the last decade there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of genome data pubicly available; however, this has led to a bottleneck in terms of analyses. Over 100 land plant plastid (chloroplast) genomes are currently available on GenBank, and this is largely due to their relatively small size, conserved nature, and the development of inexpensive, high-throughput sequencing methods. Crop plants, especially members of the plant order Poales (including the grasses, i.e. wheat, maize, rice, oats, sorghum, sugarcane, and barley), have received particular attention. Several plant nuclear genomes have been sequenced, including rice, and projects are in progress to sequence six additional grass nuclear genomes. Ongoing genome sequencing projects promise to provide an avalanche of data available for researchers. This project is creating tools to automate the examination of rates and patterns of genome evolution using the Poales as a model system. Plastid genome data provide a densely sampled and phylogenetically resolved framework for developing and testing these new methods.
The training objectives include developing computational and programming skills and enhancing the understanding of molecular evolution, plant biology, and bioinformatics. Broader impacts include utilizing an interdisciplinary approach leading to collaboration with researchers in the fields of biology, computer science, mathematics, and statistics.
