I will integrate the Intern into my research program by having him work with graduate students, a post-doctorate, and a laboratory technician. The intern will have the opportunity to work on a project to determine the lipid content of pork chops from a research project of the National Barrow Show. The student will also participate in a project to evaluate the effect of a probiotic on the feed efficiency and productivity of dairy cows

How will we provide enough food for all the people on earth in a few decades? My research group is studying sustainable methods to use naturally existing biodiversity in chickens to produce offspring that are innately more efficient and resistant to the negative effects of disease and heat stress. The intern will use contemporary molecular biology techniques to analyze genes and their relationship with important traits in chickens. The outcomes of the overall project are safe and wholesome food for humans, improved animal health, and reduced impact on the environment.

The student will participate in a genetic screen to isolate new Tol2 gene trap alleles that express the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) in the developing zebrafish embryo. The student will screen for new alleles that show tissue-specific patterns of expression, and choose one to further characterize. This will include cloning the gene, carry out comparative genomic and phylogenetic analyses, and literature searches to investigate the cellular function of the gene product. Gene function will be examined by analyzing the phenotype of homozygous gene trap mutants. The project is designed to provide experience in developmental biology and molecular genetics.

Rad50 is a well-conserved protein involved in repairing the most deleterious form of DNA damage, the double-strand break. Rad50 stably binds the Mre11 protein, forming what is known as the MR complex. The structure of the MR complex is known; however, the location where the DNA substrate binds to the Rad50 protein is unclear. This project will use a combination of bioinformatics, structural modeling, and protein site-directed mutagenesis to determine the Rad50 DNA binding site. This information will further our understanding of how an organism maintains its genetic integrity in the face of a wide-range of DNA damaging agents.

We are interested in both the detrimental and beneficial impacts of bacterial communities on the health of plants. A fundamental aspect of bacterial-plant interactions is the ability of the bacteria to colonize a plant. We have the complete genome sequence of a bacterial plant pathogen and are "mining" that sequence to learn about the ecology and colonization strategies that the pathogen uses to survive and infect plants. Such mining involves predicting the functions of genes, particularly those that are expressed highly on plants, and experimentally evaluating these functions. The student involved in this project would contribute to our ongoing projects to evaluate genes that respond to specific chemical signals from plants and genes that respond to specific wavelengths of light.

Pennycress and camelina for biofuels: Intern will assist in the phenotypic and genetic characterization of the Thlaspi arvense (pennycress) and Camelina sativa (camelina) collections. This work is supported by a USDA-AFRI grant to train undergraduates in plant breeding methods and theory, and the intern will gain broad exposure to the conservation and utilization of many plant genetic resource species.

Environmental temperatures experienced during embryonic development permanently determine offspring sex (known as TSD) in several major groups of vertebrate animals. Why this important trait is determined almost solely by the environment is not well understood. Research on short-lived species of fish and lizards with TSD finds that certain temperatures are better for males and other temperatures are better for females, but it is not clear if this pattern holds for long-lived species with TSD. The student will help collect eggs from turtle nests, incubate eggs at different temperatures in the lab, rear offspring in the field, and monitor fitness-related traits.

Pennycress and camelina for biofuels: Intern will assist in the phenotypic and genetic characterization of the Thlaspi arvense (pennycress) and Camelina sativa (camelina) collections. This work is supported by a USDA-AFRI grant to train undergraduates in plant breeding methods and theory, and the intern will gain broad exposure to the conservation and utilization of many plant genetic resource species.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) of honey bees presents a dire challenge for honey bee health, and is contributing to a pollination crisis that is negatively impacting the U.S. food supply. Despite a great deal of research on CCD in the past five years, there is still no known cause of the disorder. In fact, the consensus from previous studies is that there is no single cause, and that CCD is the result of complex interactions between several factors, including diseases, nutrition, and other stressors. We will test a new hypothesis about CCD using a highly integrative approach that encompasses virology, physiology, behavior, and genomics. We hypothesize that bees under nutritional stress leave the hive in search of food, but are unable to return due to virus pathology, resulting in rapid depopulation of the hive and colony collapse. This project will test the effects of a virus of concern, Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) on bee mortality and immune responses; we will determine whether these effects are more severe if bees are under nutritional stress. The long-term goal of this research is to identify strategies for enhancing bee health through improved nutrition.

My research group is primarily interested in characterizing relationships between host ecology and the transmission and distribution of disease, identifying ecological and environmental factors associated with disease outbreaks, and evaluating impacts of disease to wildlife populations. The intern will work closely with one of my graduate students on a project examining the population genetic structure of deer in Iowa. The intern will be trained in molecular biology techniques integral to population genetics, such as DNA extraction from deer tissue, PCR amplification and individual genotyping, among others. The goal of the overall project is to understand gene flow in deer well enough to predict extent of individual deer movement and its ramifications on the spread of diseases, such as Chronic Wasting Disease, in Iowa.

The purpose of this project is to identify the opportunities and barriers that Latino students face in Iowa's secondary agricultural education programs. Through the project we wanted to identify the socioeconomic factors that Latino students face, determine the benefits of the agricultural education program and the National FFA Organization, and gather a general consensus of opportunities and barriers by the leaders in the communities. To answer these objectives, Agricultural Education teachers, Latinos Students enrolled in the program, community leaders, school administrators and agricultural education advisory board members will be interviewed.

A project is available to study the response of plants to adverse environmental conditions. This is an important issue in understanding the ability of crops to cope with changing global environments. We have a collection of mutant Arabidopsis plants with defects in genes involved in responses to environmental stress. We are interested in conducting laboratory measurements on the growth and the expression of a molecular biomarker when these plants are subjected to controlled stresses. We are also interested in making some of these same measurements on corn plants in the field.

This 2-year multistate, multidisciplinary project was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture - Special Crop Initiative. Our team focuses on making discoveries in grape and wine chemistry. We combine engineering, analytical chemistry, and the science of smell and aroma. Our laboratory specializes in simultaneous chemical and sensory analyses that we have successfully used in real-life problems, e.g., measuring gaseous emissions in the field and solving livestock odor problem. Equipped with the knowledge and experience in branching several fields of engineering and science we focus on another real problem, i.e., how to help the development of nascent grape-growing and wine-making industry in northern U.S.

Day-old broiler chicks will be fed with and without direct-fed microbials (DFM) for 21 days. DFMs are probiotic microorganisms which are supplemented through feed and will establish in the intestine to exert beneficial effects to the chickens. Body weight (BW), feed intake (FI) will be measured on days 0, 7, 14 and 21 and feed conversion ratio (FCR) will be calculated. The data for each treatment group will be statistically analyzed for the periods from d 0-7, 0-14 and 0-21 to look into the performance differences in BW, FI and FCR due to DFM supplementation.

Heat stress alters normal cellular functions and can have deleterious consequences for the whole organism. In the case of animal production heat stress causes a reduction in animal growth resulting in economic loss for the industry. While the detrimental effects of heat stress have been long appreciated, the mechanism(s) that underlies these changes remains unknown. We will test the hypotheses that 1) heat stress causes increased free radical injury and 2) initiates an inflammatory response in skeletal muscle cells.

We are interested in knowing how organisms metabolize RNA, one of the most important molecules in all cells. We have plant mutants with altered cellular metabolism that cannot process RNA correctly. These mutants are an excellent tool to understand the mechanisms used by all cells to degrade RNA. The research will include molecular biology techniques, cell biology and microscopy, and plant physiology.