Abstract DBI 9750297 Julie M. Stone This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biosciences Related to the Environment for 1997. This fellowship provides an opportunity for the Fellow to gain additional scientific training beyond the doctoral degree and to pursue innovative and imaginative into the fundamental mechanisms underlying the interactions between organisms and their environment at the molecular, cellular, organismal, population, community and/or ecosystem level in any area of biology supported by the Directorate for Biological Sciences of the National Science Foundation. Each fellowship supports a research and training plan to be carried out in a sponsoring laboratory. The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled "Pathogen resistance as a model system for the perception of environmental signals in plants." To gain a better understanding of plant responses to environmental signals, mutants in the pathogen resistance signal transduction pathway of Arabidopsis thaliana are being identified using genetic selections based on a pathogen-responsive promoter fused to selectable marker genes. Mutants are being characterized with respect to altered expression of pathogen-regulated genes, and the identity of the mutated genes ultimately determined using positional map-based cloning techniques. An avirulent strain of Pseudomonas syringae and the RSP2 gene are being used in this study.
