EUGENE–A $2.7 million grant will help the University of Oregon become a national leader in training a new breed of biological scientists for the next millennium.

The five-year grant, announced Wednesday (Aug. 4) by the National Science Foundation (NSF), will enable UO scientists to prepare the next generation of researchers who, by bridging the gap between traditional disciplines, can take advantage of the biological revolution now underway to advance human understanding of life processes and interactions.

"With a whole host of powerful new technical tools in place," Postlethwait adds, "our challenge now is to train a new breed of biologists with the intellectual skills necessary to bridge the traditional disciplinary gaps between molecule, cell, organism and population."

To address that challenge, Postlethwait and fellow UO biology professor Michael Lynch will jointly oversee the NSF’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) grant. Funds will support an innovative training program for 15 Ph.D. students a year for five years in what Lynch calls "a good candidate for one of the most interesting and promising areas in science today, and an area that will only become more important in the next century. This grant will help establish the UO as a central player in this biological revolution."

According to Postlethwait and Lynch, the IGERT grant is unique in the way that it is focused not only on evolution, embryological development or genomics (the study of the entire set of an organism’s genes), but also on training tomorrow’s generation of biologists in the highly productive interfaces between and among all those areas. These up-and-coming researchers will be asking questions that scientists are only now in a position to answer.

For example, what are the genetic differences that cause an animal like a mouse or fish to develop a much larger brain than animals without backbones–and how did these differences evolve? What are the genetic differences between the large, showy monkey flowers in the Cascade Mountains that are pollinated by bees and the small, closed flowers of a closely related species that self pollinate–and how did these genetic changes arise over time?

"This is, to my knowledge, the first formalized program in which students will have the opportunity to study these formerly separate disciplines in this way," Postlethwait says. "I’m certain that the integrative nature of the program played a key role in winning us support from NSF."

That support will be at a level of $500,000 per year, with an additional $200,000 included for equipment purchases.

The majority of the funding will go toward providing two-year fellowships that allow students working on their doctoral degrees to focus on laboratory research. The unique aspect of these fellowships is that they will foster the integrative approach to science by giving each student the opportunity to work and learn not in only one laboratory, as would be traditional, but in two laboratories at once, each with an emphasis in a different area.

Susie Bassham will be one of the first to receive IGERT support. A student in her fifth year of Ph.D. studies in evolution and development, she works in the Postlethwait laboratory.

"There were just a handful of us doing the kind of work that this grant supports," she says. "This funding will now greatly expand the number of students who share common interests and expertise in this field. The grant will really help create a critical mass of talent and overlapping research here at the U of O."

Along with support for the students, the highly competitive IGERT grant also will be used to bring experts from other universities to Oregon to work with students, to bring other grad students here, to send UO students to conferences, to fund an annual conference and to support two half-time postdoctoral fellowships.

The majority of the equipment funding will be spent on two DNA sequencers that will be used to compare corresponding genes between species.

"We are at a very exciting time in the history of science," Lynch explains. "In the past, embryologists, geneticists and evolutionary biologists were working away, with only a minimal amount of overlap, but as these fields have matured, the amount of interconnection has increased dramatically. Now, people are thinking more and more about how evolutionary novelties arose."

Postlethwait predicts that, with the IGERT grant, Oregon will become "a hotbed of training and research in this innovative area that will likely have a long-term positive effect on biology studies at the UO. The students will serve as a catalyst for increased collaboration between laboratories."

The University of Oregon is one of 21 doctorate-granting institutions that received $54.5 million in IGERT funding this year.

Lynch, Postlethwait and Tom Dyke, UO vice provost for research, recently attended a gathering of IGERT grantees, at which NSF Director Rita Colwell spoke.

"These areas clearly have great future potential, as will a new generation of broadly trained researchers who can work effectively across disciplines," Colwell said. She asserted the IGERT program is generating a culture change and new perspectives, for both students and faculty, on the role of researchers and their career opportunities.

"The interdisciplinary programs, and student internships in industry, government and abroad, provide new opportunities for students, faculty and institutions. By building on the strengths of different departments and institutions, we are making graduate education more useful to students and more responsive to national needs," she said.

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