Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Microbial Biology for FY 2002

这一行动为2002财政年度NSF微生物生物学博士后奖学金提供资金。 该研究金支持关于原生动物、微藻、真菌、古菌、细菌和病毒物种的基础生物学的培训和研究，这些物种通常不被视为模式生物。此外，它为最近的博士生获得微生物生物学的额外培训提供了机会，在既定科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并拓宽他/她的科学视野，超越本科和研究生培训期间的研究经验。这些奖学金还旨在帮助新科学家指导他们的研究工作，跨越传统学科，并利用独特的研究资源，地点和设施，包括外国地点。这项研究和培训计划的题目是“大肠杆菌素类抗生素基因的进化是为了增加宿主细菌的竞争力，还是自私的成瘾基因？“大肠杆菌素型细菌素被认为是进化为化感作用剂，赋予具有它们的细菌菌株竞争优势。 本研究探讨了另一种假设，大肠杆菌素质粒是自私的元素，并利用一种形式的后分离杀死，以确保其维护的宿主细菌。

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 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 "Have colicin type antibiotic genes evolved to increase their host bacteria's competitiveness, or are they selfish addictive genes?" Colicin type bacteriocins are believed to have evolved as allelopathic agents that confer a competitive advantage to bacterial strains that harbor them. This research investigates an alternative hypothesis that colicin plasmids are selfish elements and utilize a form of post segregational killing to insure their maintenance by host bacteria.