Project description:

ENGAGE includes an innovative, USDA-funded collaborative research project carried out by HCC students at Northwest and Central College.

As part of this project, Microbiology students isolate plasmids containing chickpea cDNA donated by Dr. Michael Grusak of the USDA & the Childrens Nutrition Research Center. The isolated DNA samples are passed on to General Biology I students, who visually verify the presence ("yes") or absence ("no") of plasmid DNA on agarose gels. Once verified, Genetics students sequence (determine the order of the DNA "letters") of the DNA sample.

Goal:

Chickpea, a.k.a. the garbanzo bean, is the third most important food legume grown in 45 countries around the world, and an important source of protein, zinc and folate in developing countries. In addition, chickpea plants thrive in low-water conditions. Scientists are interested in studying chickpea genetics because of these favorable properties.

The chickpea plant may have as many as tens of thousands of different genes. You can think of these genes as protein recipes in the DNA cook book. Just because a recipe is in the cook book however does not mean that is is always being used. This is analogous to two restaurants having the very same cook book, but with one restaurant choosing to cook Chinese foods only, and the other Italian foods only, resulting in very different restaurants. Likewise, living organisms such as plants may vary the subset of genes they choose to use depending on the tissue and growth conditions. Finding out which genes are used where and under what circumstances can tell us something about what makes a plant nutritious and drought-resistant.

We can determine which genes are actively being used by cDNA isolation; only genes that are actively being used will result in cDNA, while unused genes will not. The cDNA library being sequenced here came from an chickpea hybrid plant obtained by crossing one variety of chickpea (Cicer arietum) with another variety (Cicer reticulatum). The hybrid plants were grown under low iron conditions to see which genes are active under those conditions. This kind of information may eventually help scientists make plants optimally nutritious.

Data:

Students involved in the project are invited to record his/her (nick)name in the appropriate column. This will allow the tracking of personal samples over time. Several successful cDNA, or "EST" sequences have already been uploaded to the GenBank database of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). You can visit these entries by clicking on the GenBank link in the last column. Other sequences are still "works in progress"; preliminary data with information on the kind of gene we found have been attached below this table. Click on "view all" to see all.