9322144 Johnson This award provides funds to the Department of Molecular Genetics at Ohio State University to establish a Research Experience for Undergraduates Site. Participants will be recruited from high quality undergraduate institutions where research opportunities are limited. The students will undertake an intense 10-week summer research program that introduces them to a research problem, trains them in the experimental approaches that are used to attack the problem, stimulates them to develop independence, and enhances their ability to communicate scientific information to others. Particular emphasis will be placed on the students' independent planning of experiments, interpretation of experimental data, and presentation of their observations to other students and faculty. The projects in which the REU students will participate reflect the diversity of research interests of the faculty as well as the common foundation of molecular genetics. This common foundation will enable the REU students to appreciate the power of modern molecular genetic approaches to solve a wide variety of problems in the biological sciences. The REU students will work closely with the faculty mentor and with the graduate students, postdocs and technicians in their laboratories. They will participate in the weekly meetings of each research group as well as the weekly REU seminar series. This will enable all of the REU students to meet on a regular basis, to compare their experiences, and to broaden their horizons regarding important research problems. At the end of the summer, the students will write a summary of their experimental results and present their results to the faculty and REU participants. ***
