Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY-1999

本行动资助1999年美国国家科学基金会生物信息学博士后研究奖学金。这项研究和培训计划是在系统生物学领域，名为“利用分子谱系追踪细胞过程的进化”。本项目分为两部分。第一种方法需要“系统发育图谱”。这结合了小亚基核糖体RNA （ssu rRNA）的系统发育框架作为支架，其同源细胞过程如代谢过程，基因或形态描述被映射。第二种方法是根据体外经验进化数据和现有程序的修改版本，在一对序列中纳入已知分化时间的化石证据，建立一个进化速度模型。该模型将应用于系统发育映射的结果，以努力在ssu rRNA树拓扑结构的内部节点上放置相对时间。结果将包括对生物信息学社区感兴趣的新的分析工具，以及为访问和分析序列数据提供新的策略。其中一些程序将在生物信息学的范围之外有用。此外，关于细胞过程进化的基本答案将为生命起源的过程提供新的见解。

This action funds an NSF Research Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for 1999.The research and training plan is in the area of systematic biology and is entitled "Tracking the evolution of cellular processes using molecular genealogy." This project is in two parts. The first entails 'phylogeny mapping'. This incorporates the phylogenetic framework of small subunit ribosomal RNA (ssu rRNA) as a scaffold on which homologous cellular processes such as metabolic processes, genes, or morphological description are mapped. The second involves producing a model for a rate of evolution based onempirical in vitro evolution data and modified versions of existing programs that incorporate fossil evidence for known divergence times in a pair of sequences. This model will be applied to the results of thephylogeny mapping in an effort to place a relative time on internal nodes of the ssu rRNA tree topology. Results of will include new analysis tools of interest to the bioinformatics community as well as providing new strategies for accessing and analyzing sequence data. Some of these programs will be useful beyond the scope of bioinformatics. In addition, fundamental answers concerning the evolution of cellular processes willlend new insights into the process by which life originated.