This action funds an NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2009 and is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). 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 Emilia Huerta-Sanchez is "Understanding the effect of spatial selection on DNA sequences with population genetic models." The host institution for this research is the University of California Berkeley under the sponsorship of Dr. Rasmus Nielsen.
Natural selection on human populations and our migration and settlement patterns over evolutionary time scales influences the DNA sequence differences observed between individuals today. Population genetics provides a theoretical and modeling framework to analyze the most likely cause of the differences. This project is developing general models for describing the genetic adaptations that occur under spatially inhomogeneous environments, that is environments where the selection pressure varies as a function of distance or local geography, and on spatially separated subpopulations. A goal of this fellowship is to perform statistical inference on genetic data with the aim of elucidating regions of the genome under strong selective pressure and deduce the role of these adaptations.
The training goals of this fellowship are to broaden experience and involvement in interdisciplinary projects (statistical methods, stochastic processes and bioinformatics). The training component also includes mentorship in a prominent population genetics research lab. Computational tools developed under this project will be made publicly available. As an educational contribution, the Fellow will recruit and mentor undergraduate students and introduce them to the theory and methods of population genetics and academic research.
