PYI: Ecology and Genetics of Microbial Evolution

来自享有盛誉的五年总统青年研究人员奖的资金将用于支持细菌及其质粒的种群生物学研究。它们庞大的种群和较短的世代允许采用一种实验性的方法来研究进化过程，而不仅仅是相关的方法。研究工作将分为四个主要领域：大肠杆菌进化种群适合性的遗传基础，与大肠杆菌四环素抗性基因调控的替代模式相关的适合性后果，大肠杆菌与质粒pACYC184之间关联的进化和遗传学，以及重组功能(特别是氯苯甲酸降解)对假单胞菌中质粒稳定性和宿主适合性的影响。这些项目需要精确测量特定的遗传变异，包括染色体和染色体外，对细菌净生长或相对适合度的影响。

Funding from the prestigious five-year Presidential Young Investigator award will be used to support research on the population biology of bacteria and their plasmids. Their large populations and short generations permit an experimental, not merely correlative, approach to the study of evolutionary processes. Research efforts will fall into four major areas: genetic basis of fitness in evolving populations of Escherichia coli, fitness consequences associated with alternative modes of regulation of tetracycline resistance genes in E. coli, evolution and genetics of an association between E. coli and plasmid pACYC184, and effects of recombinant functions (particularly chlorobenzoate degradation) on plasmid stability and host fitness in Pseudomonas species. Precise measurements of the effects of particular genetic variants, both chromosomal and extrachromosomal, on bacterial net growth, or relative fitness, are required for these projects.