Achievement

One of the major goals is for our trainees to publish a multi-authored paper from the "Problems in Genomics" course. A manuscript was recently submitted by four of our trainees (currently and formerly funded) on the microbial diversity in soils. The trainees showed that the communities were more abundant and diverse than previous studies using culturing techniques. For two years, these trainees have been working to complete the analyses and write the manuscript. This is a testament to the continuing collaboration that persists beyond their IGERT funding period. Also, a goal of the course is to allow the trainees to conduct research in an interdisciplinary setting. These four trainees and their two collaborative authors are from different backgrounds: Neuroscience, Genetics, Natural Resources, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Insect Science and the Biosphere 2. The interdisciplinary collaboration and resulting publication was made possible through our IGERT program.