Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology for FY 2009

这项行动为2009财政年度的NSF博士后研究奖学金提供资金，该奖学金使用2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）的资金。培训和发展计划的题目是“与温室气体生产和消费有关的陆地微生物群落基因组学”。这项研究的主办机构是密歇根州立大学，赞助科学家是托马斯施密特。土壤微生物群落受到了原生土地转为农业用途的影响。 这种转化导致土壤中二氧化碳和一氧化二氮的产生增加，甲烷的消耗减少。 这些变化加剧了大气中温室气体浓度上升的问题。 这项研究（1）描述了土壤微生物群落，并量化了不同土地管理措施下的甲烷消耗和一氧化二氮通量，（2）比较了各种方法学宏基因组技术的效用，以评估特定数据类型的优势和局限性，（3）开发了新的易于使用的宏基因组分析工具，特别关注蛋白质结构域的发现。培训目标是获得分析计算和数学技术，并开发用于宏基因组数据分析的开源工具。由于生物燃料生产和粮食生产的增加，纳入农业管理的土地面积扩大，了解农业对土壤微生物学的影响对土地管理做法产生广泛影响，以减轻与这种用途有关的潜在负面影响。此外，为该项目开发的开源工具正在提供给微生物生态学研究界。

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.