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 DR. SCHUG RECEIVES NSF FUNDING TO STUDY GENETIC VARIATION

GREENSBORO -- Dr. Malcolm Schug, a geneticist and assistant professor of biology at The University of North Carolina

Dr. Malcolm Schug

at Greensboro, is recipient of a $276,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, for a 3-year study of genetic variation.

Schug will use fruit flies to model how natural selection influences changes in the genome as organisms colonize and adapt to new habitats. Fruit flies are particularly useful in the study of genetics because they have a short life cycle -- about 14 days -- and their genomes can be manipulated in the laboratory.  The findings should give insight into how the human genetic code evolved over time, because historical human migration patterns are commensurate with fruit fly migrations. The grant will fund a technician, a post-doctoral assistantship, and several graduate and undergraduate assistantships. It is a collaborative study, involving a related study being conducted by a geneticist in Germany.

Schug joined the faculty of UNCG autumn 1999. The focus of his research is evolution and adaptation in natural populations of animals, how natural selection shapes patterns of DNA sequence variation, and how these are reflected in different phenotypes in natural populations. His research crosses diverse fields of biology including genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, evolutionary biology, and ecology.  Schug received his Ph.D. in zoology from The Ohio State University in 1995 and spent more than four years as a Research Associate studying molecular population genetics at Cornell University before coming to UNCG.  ###
 

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