Click on any
topic or scroll down to read all...also see the Staff
pages for more on all the projects.
International
scientist training materials and visits
Interactive
Resource Center
Maize
Ed Buckler's
maize genetics group (also
see their website: http://www.maizegenetics.net,
for more info)
Rebecca
Nelson's research group
Sorghum
Middle and High School
Students
Teacher
training
See also our Workshops page
Scientist training materials: Theresa
and Dr. M.Carmen de Vicente of IPGRI (International Plant Genetic Resources
Institute) have completed 2 learning modules: "Using molecular marker
technology in studies on plant genetic diversity" and (w/C. Lopez):
"Genetic diversity analysis with molecular marker data". They
are available on CD from Theresa, or downloadable from
the Interactive
Resource Center.
Theresa has just finished a Comparative Genomics module to follow these, which should be available on CD soon. See or download the slides here.
The Cornell University - IGD African Scientists Fellowship program: provides
financial support for selected African scientists to spend up to 6 months
as a visiting fellow at IGD. More
info, and Current
and past winners.
Training visits. We accept international
scientists for training visits, to catch up on research concepts or techniques
or conduct short research projects. See our visitor
page for more details on how to arrange
a visit, and our Staff
and current visitors to see some of our
current and past visitors.
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Interactive Resource Center: Theresa is working on a resource
center and helpdesk, targeted for, but not limited to, scientists in the
CGIAR system. This includes resources such as protocols, links to crop
databases, tutorials, and a place to ask research-related questions. US-AID
provided seed money to get it started, and it is now being supported by
the Generation
Challenge Program and the Syngenta
Foundation. See the Resource Center here: http://irc.igd.cornell.edu
Maize: We are part of a NSF-funded, multi-institutional project,
Molecular and Functional Diversity in the Maize Genome, that is an extension
of a previous project which studied the genetic diversity in the maize
and teosinte (the wild ancestor of maize) gene pools, examined how genetic
loci evolve, and developed methods for relating nucleotide diversity to
phenotypic effects. The overall goal of the new projectis to turn the
identification and evaluation of functional and evolutionarily important
allelic variation into a comprehensive (genomics) project that will result
in a large amount of information useful for plant breeding, evolutionary
biology, and bioinformatics. More details are on Gael's
page, http://www.panzea.org,
http://www.maizegenetics.net/,
and http://www.wisc.edu/teosinte/index.htm.
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Ed Buckler's group is part of the above-mentioned NSF Maize Genome project,
in addition to other projects. Their interests include utilizing functional
genomic approaches to dissect complex traits in plants, specifically maize
and Arabidosis. They exploit the natural diversity of these plant genomes
to identify the individual nucleotides responsible for quantitative variation
and apply this research to maize breeding through collaborations. See
their own website, http://www.maizegenetics.net,
for more information.
Rebecca Nelson's group works on quantitative disease resistance in the
cereals. Their current work is focused on two foliar diseases of maize
that are important in E. Africa as well as in the US. A project funded
by the Rockefeller Foundation supports collaboration with researchers
at the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute.
A project supported by USAID's Comparative Cereal Genomics Initiative
links the group with researchers at the International Rice Research Institute
and elsewhere.
Rebecca also serves as program director for The McKnight Foundation Collaborative
Crop Research Program (http://mcknight.ccrp.cornell.edu/).
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Sorghum: The sorghum research underway in our laboratory is part
of a multidisciplinary effort aimed at identifying and analyzing variation
in structure and function of C4 crop genomes (NSF award number 0115903,
see more details here).
Our group is particularly interested in the following:
1. Discovery and characterization of rapidly evolving adaptive genes in
sorghum using both bioinformatics and molecular approaches, and
2. Genome-wide scans of diversity in sorghum using microsatellite markers
-
This study will allow us to make genome-wide comparisons of diversity
in the two important sorghum gene pools (cultivated and wild races) and
to establishing quantitative measures of any overall reduction in diversity
possibly associated with selection.
Middle and High School students:
Theresa has taught DNA extractions to over 300 students and teachers,
both here at IGD and in their classroom. She uses a procedure adapted from
Iowa State University's office of Biotechnology that, while a good example
of several real-life scientific techniques, uses little more than bananas,
shampoo, and salt! Download the handout [pdf] and see pictures of students learning it at IGD here.
Nicole
Kirschten's biology classes from Newfield High School visited again
this year, April 24 - 26, 2007. Bob Suran and Laurel Southard from the Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers have taken over the management of this annual event.
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Teacher training:
Theresa taught at NC Agricultural & Technical College for Dr. Mulumebet Worku's summer course for high school teachers.
She will be teaching this year at the GK-12 Summer Institute for teachers at Univ of California-Irvine, as part of the Maize Outreach project.
Past:
2002
Millet Workshop Report
, and Photos