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By Phil Williams
pwilliam@franklin.uga.edu
While some students spent their summer catching some rays or sleeping late, four students came to the University of Georgia to learn the intricacies of a relatively new branch of science called genomics. They took home cutting-edge techniques along with an advantage over other science students.
 The pilot program, designed for minority students, ran from June 19 to July 28, and four students--three from Clark Atlanta University and one from Morehouse College--took part.
“This program reflects how science operates now,” says Jonathan Arnold, the professor of genetics who is leading the development of a new center on campus, the Science and Technology Center for Computing Life. The center is now moving through the approval process at UGA. “Science is interdisciplinary and team-oriented. This program was designed to let undergraduate students get the real flavor of the new directions biology and math are going.”
The summer’s work was intense for students Ono Oboh, Kenrick Pratt and Ikovwa Irune of Clark Atlanta and David Glover of Morehouse. Oboh and Irune are from Nigeria, and Pratt is a native of the Bahamas. Glover hails from Douglas, Ga. Funding for the program was provided by the provosts’ offices at CAU and UGA.
David Logan, a biology professor at CAU, led the program this summer, developing the curriculum with Arnold and supervising the lab procedures and training the students. William Seffens, another CAU biology professor, led the computational biology component.
“The program allowed the students to work in a modern setting free from any formal course work,” says Logan. “It allowed them to see that research is about things that don’t always work the first time in the lab. I think it opened their eyes in using a model system to see how genes work.”
At the center of the students’ work was something that might be found on a three-day-old sandwich: bread mold. In the study of the function of genes, this mold, Neurosposa crassa, has been very important indeed. The students were fortunate to spend time with Mary Case, a retired UGA genetics professor with 50 years’ experience working with Neurosposa.
“This is one of the organisms in which the function of genes was first discovered,” says Arnold. “It’s a good model teaching tool even now.”
The program this summer was part of a major multi-university effort that will come to fruition if the center is awarded a $20 million National Science Foundation grant. Arnold and program coordinator Linda Lee will know the status of the grant application in late fall. The center has been approved by the Faculty Senate of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences but must still receive approval from University Council and the regents.
One of the proposed center’s goals is promoting diversity in science. Providing students a hands-on experience in an interdisciplinary environment will further their education, of course, but there are broader implications. After the summer’s work, the students are qualified to work in many different kinds of scientific laboratories and could choose to further their education in these areas as well.
Among the areas covered in the program this summer were setting up a lab bench; using safe lab techniques; doing RNA and DNA experiments; learning laboratory techniques; recording data in a lab notebook and learning the ethics involved; using computational biology to build models of fungal systems from genomics experiments; and presenting data at the Third International Fungal Genomics Symposium, which was held on campus July 27-28.
While this year’s pilot project was limited to four students, plans are being made for 25-30 participants in the summer of 2001, and as many as 50 might be invited in years to come, Arnold says.
Another goal of the project was to help in designing a lab for a new course in genomics and society, to be offered to UGA freshmen during spring semester 2001.
“The students attended genomics lectures twice a week,” says Lee. “The material covered in the lectures is what was taught in a new genomics course first offered to UGA students last spring.”
The students lived in residence halls and ate in UGA dining halls. They got a temporary UGACard and enjoyed such facilities as the Ramsey Student Center, says Arnold.
“I was very impressed by the dedication of these students,” he says. “They were often here late in the evening, but that’s the way science goes once an experiment starts. These were clearly very bright students.”
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