Dr. Du receives NSF Grant to research Maize Genome

Dr. Du received a three-year (September 2014 to August 2017) research grant from the National Science Foundation.  The grant will provide invaluable resource for the researchers to fully exploit the maize genome organization.  Throughout the grant, MSU will receive $497,375 to support a bioinformatics postdoctoral research associate and some undergraduate student research assistants.

The availability of a mutant line in which a single gene has been disrupted gives biologists a powerful tool in understanding the action of that gene.  Thus, sequence-indexed collections of single insertions are critical resources for elucidating gene function in organisms with sequenced genomes.  It has recently become feasible to combine high-throughput sequencing with multi-dimensional pooling strategies to sequence and index hundreds of new insertions at a time.  This work will complete the production of a reverse genetics resource based on the transposon Ds that will enable the community to generate and build up a single-gene knockout resource for maize.