The Editorial Board of the journal Molecular Ecology has selected Professor Nancy Moran of The University of Texas at Austin for its 2017 Molecular Ecology Prize. The Prize recognizes "an outstanding scientist who has made significant contributions to Molecular Ecology," as selected by an independent award committee.
Professor Moran's nomination statement particularly highlights her extensive work on symbiosis and microbial community genetics:
The 2017 Molecular Ecology Prize has been awarded to Professor Nancy Moran for her pioneering studies of symbiosis and bacterial genome evolution. Her discoveries provide a clear link between bacterial lifestyle and population size with rates of evolution and genome degradation. Her work has also provided some of the most convincing demonstrations of the molecular basis for ecologically important traits, including defense, nutrition, and thermotolerance, including remarkable examples of convergence mediated via symbiosis. Professor Moran's more recent work on the honeybee system is now setting the standard for molecular studies of complex symbiotic gut communities.
Previous Molecular Ecology Prize recipients include Godfrey Hewitt, John Avise, Pierre Taberlet, Harry Smith, Terry Burke, Josephine Pemberton, Deborah Charlesworth, Craig Moritz, Laurent Excoffier, Johanna Schmitt, Fred Allendorf and Louis Bernatchez.
This article was adapted from a post by Jeremy Yoder for The Molecular Ecologist.
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