Achievement

PI Karen McDonald and CoPI Abhaya Dandekar developed and taught the first offering of the course, "Transgenic Plant and In Vitro Plant Cell Cultures" (PLS298), on plant transformation and in planta protein production. The majority of UCD trainees, plus other campus grad students enrolled in the course. TU trainees audited the course remotely via streaming webcast and were able to access the course website via SmartSite, an online repository for course materials with web communication tools (chat room, email archive, etc...). Student interdisciplinary teams worked on case studies involving transgenic cotton producing Bt toxin, expression of human insulin in safflower or alpha-amylase expression in corn, and presented written and oral reports on the underlying science/technology, IP and regulatory issues, and environmental, health and safety impacts.