This award is for the acquisition of a complex object sorter for sorting small whole organisms or beads. It will be used by researchers in Kansas and neighboring regions who study Caenorhabditis elegans, an organism commonly used in diverse studies in genetics, developmental biology, and other fields. This instrument will improve both the quantity and quality of the research output from the laboratories of the users. For example, it will allow the users to identify and isolate rare individuals or mutants within large populations of animals. The ability to more rapidly and easily produce additional mutations or alleles from large-scale genetic screens will be useful for investigations of pathways and mechanisms used by the organisms for development and environmental protection.
This sorter is relatively simple to operate, allowing undergraduates from the investigators' university and from a minority-serving university to be involved in this research, and increasing their interest and excitement about science.
