Abstract DBI 9750341 Claire S. Ting 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 "Key Environmental Factors Regulating Photosynthetic Gene Expression in a Novel Prokaryote." Prochlorococcus marinus is the only photosynthetic prokaryote which has been found to contain a chlorophyll a/b light-harvesting antenna as well as the phycobiliprotein, phycoerythrin. This research addresses the functional significance of phycoerythrin in this organism. The mechanisms that regulate phycoerythrin gene expression and accumulation are being determined under different light and nutrient levels.
