Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Microbial Biology for FY 2002

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This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial Biology for FY2002. The fellowship supports training and research on the basic biology of protozoan, microalgal, fungal, archaeal, bacterial and viral species that are not generally considered to be model organisms. Further, it provides opportunities for a recent doctoral recipients to obtain additional training in microbial biology, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden his/her scientific horizons beyond the research experiences during the undergraduate and graduate training. These fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including foreign locations. The research and training plan is entitled "Diversity of fungi within living leaves: molecular insights into ecology and evolution of endophytic fungi in leaves of tropical trees." Fungal endophytes, fungi inhabiting plants without causing disease, are highly diverse in tropical trees, yet are poorly known. This research assesses tropical endophyte diversity using (a) traditional isolations and multilocus sequencing and (b) direct amplification of endophyte DNA from leaves. Its overall goal is to integrate endophytes into the broader fungal phylogeny and explore the evolution of fungus-photobiont associations.