Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology for FY 2009

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This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2009 using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The training and development plan is entitled "Genomics of terrestrial microbial communities associated with the production and consumption of greenhouse gases" for Tracy Teal. The host institution for this research is Michigan State University, and the sponsoring scientist is Thomas Schmidt.Soil microbial communities have been affected by the conversion of native lands to agricultural use. This conversion has resulted in an increased production of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide from soils and a decreased consumption of methane. These changes exacerbate the problem of rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This research (1) describes soil microbial communities and quantifies the methane consumption and nitrous oxide flux in areas under different land management practices, (2) compares the utility of various methodological metagenomic techniques to assess the strengths and limitations of particular data types, and (3) develops new easy-to-use tools for metagenomic analysis, with a particular focus on protein domain finding.Training objectives are to acquire analytical computational and mathematical techniques and develop open-source tools for metagenomic data analysis. As the acreage of land brought under agricultural management expands, due to increased biofuel production as well as increased food production, an understanding of the effects of agriculture on the microbiology of soils has broad impacts for land management practices to mitigate potential negative consequences associated with such uses. Additionally, open-source tools developed for this project are being made available to the microbial ecology research community.