Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
We propose to establish a five-year Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates in the field of crop genomics and agricultural biotechnology at East Carolina University (ECU). Each year, 10 undergraduate students will be recruited and selected into this program to perform research, with a focus on investigating microRNA (miRNA) function in five different plant species treated with five different abiotic stresses, which perfectly fit into the goals of the AFRI ELI Education Grant Program. At least half of the participating students will be underrepresented students and half will be from other academic institutions, majorly local community colleges and/or historically black colleges or universities (HBCUs). Experts at ECU in the field of plant genomes and agricultural biotechnology propose to provide a research program of interdisciplinary academic education, mentoring, and research-based experimental learning for participating undergraduate students.This proposed program will integrate teaching and research together to train our next generation for promoting research and experimental learning for our undergraduate students such that upon graduation they may enter the agriculture workforce with exceptional skills or enter graduate school with agriculture-related majors, which is urgently needed in the Eastern North Carolina (NC), a major rural area in NC. This project targets the USDA AFRI challenge area "Resilient Agroecosystems" and "Food Security"; this project will also align with USDA AFRI Foundational area "Plant health and production and plant products" for providing fellowships for undergraduate students in this field. Specifically, for education, we will developa lecture and associated lab, called "Crop genomics and agricultural biotechnology" for this program, in which we will train our undergraduate students on basic foundational knowledge on the field of crop genomics and agricultural biotechnology as well as cutting-edge hand on experiments and technology, including the advanced deep sequencing and CRISPR gene editing. On the side of research, the students will investigate the impact of environmental stress on crop development and miRNA expression profiles. Specifically, worldwide the amount of arable land has declined in recent decades as a result of global climate change. Arid conditions lead to crop problems including salinity and drought stress, and continue to threaten land availability for agricultural purposes. Using marginal soils less suitable for crop growth in more agricultural practices has made the development of stress tolerant germplasm an imperative task. However, germplasm development is hampered by an incomplete understanding of the breadth of coping strategies of plants with abiotic stress. Recently discovered miRNAs are an essential regulatory molecule in many biological and metabolic processes and the role of miRNAs in plant tolerance to abiotic stress requires further research. In this fellowship program, students will work closely under the mentorship of the PD and our mentors to identify miRNAs responsive to abiotic stress, and to investigate their regulatory mechanisms by a combination of advanced, cutting-edge methodologies. More importantly, this project will investigate the miRNA regulatory mechanisms across different abiotic stresses among five major plant species. The ability to understand miRNA regulatory networks during plant growth under stress condition will empower future applied research in crop breeding using novel miRNA-based biotechnology by using transgenic and CRISPR genome editing technology.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
80%
Applied
20%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The goal of this project is to establish a five-year Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates in the field of crop genomics and agricultural biotechnology at East Carolina University (ECU). Each year, 10 undergraduate students will be recruited and selected into this program to perform research, with a focus on investigating microRNA (miRNA) function in different plant species treated with different abiotic stresses, which perfectly fit into the goals of the AFRI ELI Education Grant Program. At least half of the participating students will be underrepresented students and half will be from other academic institutions, majorly local community colleges and/or historically black colleges or universities (HBCUs). Experts at ECU in the field of plant genomes and agricultural biotechnology propose to provide a research program of interdisciplinary academic education, mentoring, and research-based experimental learning for participating undergraduate students.The major objectives:A total of 50 undergraduate student will be directly trained through a well developed summer research program.Train undergraduate students to conduct deep and broad research in the field of plant genomes and agricultural biotechnology, with a focus on miRNA expression and functional analysis during plant response to abiotic stress;Develop the undergraduate student's own research collaboration and communication skills, including conducting collaborative research, critical thinking, problem finding and solving, and written and oral presentation skills;Teach undergraduate students to use cutting-edge research technologies and valuable research skills that will prepare them for future career and study;Explore and foster undergraduate students' research interests, and motivate them to continue in the field through their studies and/or professional work in the field of plant genomes and agricultural biotechnology;Elucidate the potential role of miRNAs during plant response to abiotic stress, a major issue for plant growth, which will in the future provide a novel miRNA-based biotechnology for improving crop tolerance to abiotic stress and feed the need of next century.About 10 papers will be published in peer-reviewed journal, in which the participants will be the primary authors.The participants will give at least 20 presentation and/or poster during local and international meeting.
Project Methods
Immediately followed the program, this proposed project will be first assessed by a common NSF-supported assessment tool, called URSSA (Undergraduate Research Student Self-Assessment). URSSA is an online survey instrument for use in evaluating student outcomes of undergraduate research experiences in the sciences 87 and also the tools for Biology REU PIs88. This program will not only inform program development and delivery but also provide essential data on the national impact of student learning and achievement. During the last week of the summer research program, URSSA will be employed to assess this program. Accordingly to this project evaluation project and others related to the nature of this project, a good project might described by: 1) program success in introducing students to interdisciplinary area of plant genome and agricultural biotechnology; 2) quality and quantity of research results, scientific conference attendance and publications; 3) follow-up of students on this project; 4) student recruitment into science and agricultural careers; 5) long-term impacts on student career decisions; 6) how many participating community college students go to the Bachelor's degree and is it higher than non-participating students? and 7) for long term impact, how many participating 4-year degree students go to the graduate schools and/or agriculture workforce will also be monitored and whether it is higher than no-participating students will also be analyzed? Feedback will be collected and used to improve the performance of the following year's project.