NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2014

NSF生物学博士后奖学金将研究和培训部分结合在一起，为年轻科学家在新兴领域的职业生涯做好准备，这些领域的生物学与其他科学学科交叉，在这种情况下与数学交叉。预计这些研究员将领导国家未来的科学工作队伍。罗斯·坎宁的这一奖学金支持研究和培训，以整合量化遗传和建模方法，以了解气候变化对珊瑚共生的影响。该奖学金的主办机构是夏威夷大学和加州大学圣巴巴拉分校；赞助科学家是露丝·盖茨博士和罗杰·尼斯贝特博士。培训目标包括基因组学、生物信息学、动态能量收支理论和建模技术，以研究珊瑚与虫黄藻的共生。面向夏威夷学生的教育推广活动包括来自STEM领域代表性不足群体的学生。这项研究试图了解在全球环境变化的时代，造礁珊瑚和它们的共生藻类之间的动态相互作用。珊瑚礁生态系统未来的可持续性取决于这种共生关系的完整性；压力破坏了共生关系，但即使在没有环境压力的情况下，其调节和稳定的过程也鲜为人知。这种方法是从珊瑚和海葵中提取分子信息，并在不同的条件下培育出虫黄藻，然后模拟结果并测试模型的结果，从而从机理上理解共生的维持和破坏，并将基于“组学”的分子数据整合到珊瑚共生的动态能量预算(DEB)模型中。其具体目标是1)建立一个全面的DEB框架来模拟珊瑚-藻类共生相互作用，2)用定量的元基因组和转录组数据集评估环境对共生结构和功能的影响，以及3)将这些数据整合到DEB建模框架中，以测试关于共生调控的不同假设，并预测对环境复杂变化的反应。

NSF Postdoctoral Fellowships in Biology combine research and training components to prepare young scientists for careers in emerging areas where biology intersects with other scientific disciplines, in this case with mathematics. The Fellows are expected to lead the nation's scientific workforce of the future. This fellowship to Ross Cunning supports research and training to integrate quantitative genetic and modeling approaches to understand climate change impacts on coral symbiosis. The host institutions for the Fellowship are the University of Hawaii and the University of California, Santa Barbara; the sponsoring scientists are Drs. Ruth Gates and Roger Nisbet. Training goals include genomics, bioinformatics, and dynamic energy budget theory and modeling techniques to examine the coral-zooxanthellae symbiosis. Educational outreach to students in Hawaii includes students from groups under-represented in STEM fields. The research seeks to understand the dynamic interactions between reef-building corals and their symbiotic algae in an era of global environmental change. The future persistence of coral reef ecosystems depends on the integrity of this symbiosis; stress disrupts the symbiosis, but the processes underlying its regulation and stability, even in the absence of environmental stress, are poorly understood. The approach is to extract molecular information from corals and sea anemones with zooxanthellae raised under various conditions, then model the results and test the outcomes of the models, resulting in a mechanistic understanding of the maintenance and breakdown of symbiosis and integrate "omics"-based molecular data within a Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) model for coral symbiosis. The specific aims are to 1) develop a comprehensive DEB framework to model coral-algal symbiotic interactions, 2) assess environmental influences on symbiosis structure and function with quantitative metagenomic and transcriptomic datasets, and 3) integrate these data within the DEB modeling framework to test diverse hypotheses regarding the regulation and control of symbiosis and predict responses to complex changes in the environment.