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University of Montana Lands Prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Biology Education Program

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute http://www.hhmi.org/ has selected The University of Montana to participate in a national program offering intense, hands-on laboratory experience to undergraduate biology students.

UM joins an elite group of 24 institutions participating in the Phage Genome Research Initiative, which was launched by HHMI’s Science Education Alliance.

A phage is a virus that infects bacteria, and starting fall semester, an initial cohort of 24 UM students will take a new class where they gather samples, identify phages, isolate their DNA and obtain their DNA information.

Bill Holben and Frank Rosenzweig, faculty members in the Division of Biological Sciences, spearheaded the effort to bring the program to UM.

“This isn’t like the canned laboratory experiments used in many classes,” Professor Holben said, “so in that respect it’s pretty exciting.”

He said the project is geared toward first- and second-year biology students who will participate in “environmental, microbiology and molecular biology exercises.” First they will gather samples from places such as stockyards, waste-treatment plants or rivers. “They will have some latitude for what samples they pick,” Holben said.

The students will sample and isolate phages that affect a specific bacterium called Mycobacterium. He said all students participating across the nation will study the same group of phages to focus their work and allow them to compare notes with one another as part of a nationwide network of undergraduate researchers.

After the samples are gathered, the students will isolate the phages using basic microbiology techniques. Then they will switch to a molecular biology mode to purify the phages and obtain their DNA.

“Those of us who work in microbial ecology know that there is quite a bit of diversity out there, so there should be a lot of unique findings,” Holben said. “If the students find a unique phage, they will get to provide its scientific name. So that’s kind of fun.”

At the end of fall semester, the gathered DNA samples will be sent to the Joint Genome Institute, a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored national laboratory focused on genomic sequencing. Then when students return for spring semester, the sequence information from their phage will be waiting, and they will put the gene sequences in order, line them up and compare them with other samples gathered at UM and around the nation.

Holben said HHMI will provide all the supplies and equipment needed to conduct the class, as well as train faculty members and a teaching assistant to set up and implement the new course. In January, Holben and Rosenzweig attended an orientation at HHMI headquarters in Chevy Chase, Md., and training will be offered later this summer for the teaching assistant.

“Howard Hughes will support us for three years, with an eye toward making this class permanent in the future,” Holben said. “We are starting with one section, but the goal is to expand the class to include as many students who want to participate.”

Holben chairs UM’s biology curriculum committee, so he has a vested interest in strengthening his department’s laboratory course offerings. He said a previous HHMI grant received in 2006 allowed the department to pump up its experiential lab learning in entry-level biology courses, but sophomore-year classes such as cellular molecular biology and genetics and evolution currently don’t have a lab component.

“This new program will be perfect for those students who want to stay lab-active,” he said.

An added benefit of the new class is that it will make students part of a national network of undergraduate researchers focused on the same topic.

“I’m a really collaborative person, working with scientists across the country and around the world,” Holben said. “HHMI central already has set up a wiki – a Web-based interface for people to exchange ideas and information – so students can communicate and see each other’s data.

“Part of what makes science fun is the network of scientists you get to work with,” he said. “Through this class, our students will get to experience this as undergraduates, when most people don’t see that until graduate school.”

http://news.umt.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4987&Itemid=9

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