An award is made to California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) to acquire an Illumina MiSeq next-generation sequencer. The addition of this instrument to this campus will enhance research and teaching at the Hispanic-serving, Minority-serving institution. With CSUDH's increased commitment to cutting-edge research, the MiSeq will be the cornerstone of a plan to build infrastructure and capacity in the biosciences. The primary users will employ the MiSeq to study topics including bacterial evolution, environmental microbiology, developmental biology, and plant evolutionary genetics. The primarily low-income, Hispanic and African American undergraduate and graduate students who perform research in the faculty members' labs will use the current industry-standard MiSeq technology to answer these broad biological questions. These and other faculty members will incorporate authentic research experiences using the MiSeq into the courses they teach, potentially reaching hundreds of students per year. Additionally, CSUDH faculty will work with faculty from the local high-poverty K-12 school district and community colleges to include the MiSeq and genomic data in their curricula to build a bridge to biology careers. The increased interaction of faculty and students across these institutions will strengthen the educational pipeline and help these underserved students visualize successful careers as scientists.
The on-campus capabilities of CSUDH's team of new, research-driven investigators in the biosciences will be dramatically enhanced by the acquisition of a MiSeq. Initially, three research groups and five research projects will use the next generation sequencing technology. The MiSeq has the potential to assist faculty researchers in making contributions in the following areas: characterizing the effects of environment and genotype on microbial evolution, determining the role the nectar microbiome plays in pollinator preferences, identifying both the genetic and microbial factors that contribute to neuron development and function in zebrafish, and predicting the effects of climate change on plant evolution. This equipment will greatly increase the research productivity of faculty and student researchers, allowing the researchers to easily and cost-effectively use techniques such as metagenomic sequencing, bacterial whole genome re-sequencing, transcriptomics, targeted sequencing, and genotyping-by-sequencing. Further, the addition of this instrument to CSUDH facilities will help catapult the institution into a higher tier of research institutions, increasing opportunities for faculty and students.
