Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Microbial Biology for FY 2002

这一行动为NSF 2002财年微生物生物学博士后奖学金提供了资金。该奖学金支持关于原生动物、微藻、真菌、古生物、细菌和病毒物种的基本生物学的培训和研究，这些物种通常不被认为是模式生物。此外，它还为最近的博士获得者提供了获得微生物生物学方面的额外培训的机会，在知名科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并在本科生和研究生培训期间拓宽其科学视野，超越研究经验。这些奖学金还旨在帮助新科学家引导他们的研究工作跨越传统的学科界限，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标题是《活叶内真菌的多样性：热带树木叶片内生真菌的生态学和进化的分子洞察》。真菌内生菌，即寄生在植物上而不会引起疾病的真菌，在热带树木中具有高度的多样性，但人们对此知之甚少。这项研究使用(A)传统分离和多位点测序以及(B)直接从叶片中扩增内生菌DNA来评估热带内生菌的多样性。它的总体目标是将内生菌整合到更广泛的真菌系统发育中，并探索真菌-光生生物组合的进化。

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 a 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 "Diversity of fungi within living leaves: molecular insights into ecology and evolution of endophytic fungi in leaves of tropical trees." Fungal endophytes, fungi inhabiting plants without causing disease, are highly diverse in tropical trees, yet are poorly known. This research assesses tropical endophyte diversity using (a) traditional isolations and multilocus sequencing and (b) direct amplification of endophyte DNA from leaves. Its overall goal is to integrate endophytes into the broader fungal phylogeny and explore the evolution of fungus-photobiont associations.