THE BEETLEMANIA GENOME SEQUENCING PROJECT: STF FUNDS EMPOWER UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION IN CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
with “third generation”, single-molecule, long-read nanopore sequencing arrays. The course, which attracts undergraduates majoring in Biology or Environmental Sciences, is centered on a semester-long project that combines field work, molecular biology and genome sequencing, and computational analyses of genomic data. Students begin the semester by going on field trips to various wooded sites throughout Johnson County to collect beetles in the wild and then observe them in the lab. Students identify their family, genus, and species and work in teams to select the most promising beetles to sequence, focusing on those that have uniquely patterned anatomies and for which sequenced genomes are not available. Students next prepare genomic DNA and utilize Oxford Nanopore Technology’s MinION sequencing devices, which can plug directly into USB computer ports. These allow students to sequence thousands of long strands of individual DNA molecules simultaneously. In the last part of the course, students take the resulting sequence data and begin to assemble the genomes, piecing together DNA sequence in the computer to patch together intact chromosomes. Finally, students conduct phylogenetic analyses to understand and place each particular beetle species in an evolutionary framework to compare to known insect genomes. A major goal of the Evolution Laboratory is for students to be able to publish new insights into beetle genomics as authors on publications. To that end, the first manuscript from the re-imagined course, featuring the genomes of five previously- unsequenced beetle species, is being prepared for submission. Because genome assembly can be time-consuming, some undergraduates are continuing the project after the fall semester has ended. These Evolution Lab student “veterans” continue as research assistants in the Erives lab under the NSF-funded REU program. Additional plans are also underway for students in other bioinformatics and genomics courses to participate by further analyzing the student-collected genomic data. The Beetlemania project is a great example of the ways CLAS support can be leveraged to provide cutting-edge scientific education for our undergraduates. We thank Albert Erives, Associate Professor, Department of Biology, for his contributions to this article
A major goal of developmental biology is to understand how mechanisms that control body patterning are co-opted during evolution to generate diverse external features. CLAS undergraduates are getting an opportunity to tackle this outstanding question in an innovative way. Using cutting- edge technology purchased with Student Technology Fee (STF) funds, Biology undergraduates are collecting beetles and working together year-round on the “BeetleMania” genome sequencing project. Further comes from the Department of Biology and an NSF- funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) entitled “Engaging Undergraduates in Interdisciplinary Evolutionary Science” (Principal Investigators: Andrew Forbes, Associate Professor of Biology and Maurine Neiman, Professor of Biology). An STF award was granted
to retool the experiential Evolutionary Laboratory course (BIOL:3676, course director Associate Professor of Biology Albert Erives)
10 I College of Liberal Arts and Sciences • clas.uiowa.edu
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