This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Funding from this project has established a shared-user molecular genetic and genomic facility in the Biology Department at the University of South Dakota. Our faculty members share a common set of molecular research approaches in the fields of ecology, evolutionary and conservation genetics, and developmental biology. Due to the productivity and common usage of molecular instruments by these faculty members, and others in the Division of Basic and Biomedical Sciences, the University of South Dakota has dedicated new space for a completely renovated Molecular Genetic and Genomic Core Facility. This shared laboratory space in the Biology Department will maintain state of the art equipment for use in both research and teaching. Research projects utilizing these instruments are wide-ranging and their acquisition will benefit the research programs of many faculty, including students involved in those program, which comprise the majority of graduate students in our doctoral and masters programs, a large number of undergraduate researchers, our local community through our participation in K-12 outreach, and local Native American communities through their direct participation in our research projects. While each of the faculty has their own research specialization, there is clear collaboration between projects that will be further enhanced by a shared space with the requested instrumentation. The genomics facility will be used to train a considerable (and growing) number of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers via both formal annual workshops and in individual research projects. In addition, the equipment will be demonstrated and used in existing undergraduate and graduate courses. Finally, several of the projects using our current genetic analyzer involve collaborative work with local Native American tribes in their communities on tribal lands. Acquisition of this instrumentation will enhance this work and will allow the PIs to offer authentic, full-scale research experiences to two high school students, and will involve tribal biologists and community members from the Lower Brule Reservation in field work on local organisms and study systems. This interaction will establish a basis for future relationships to introduce young Native American students to science.
