Broader impacts of the proposed activity

Although this is a basic science research proposal, we will integrate teaching of graduate and undergraduate students, as well as postdoctoral training into the framework of activities. There are a wide variety of research techniques proposed here, including bioinformatics, carbohydrate chemistry, biochemistry, molecular genetics, and genomics. We propose to offer cross training in multiple areas to all of the personnel, hopefully producing students who at the end of the project will be well situated to continue scientific careers grounded in the required combination of whole-genome studies and fundamental mechanistic sciences. We are committed to including undergraduates in the research program, and intend to provide ongoing fellowships that span several years. Three undergraduate students currently are working in the laboratory as research associates.

We view undergraduate participation as the best way to increase the participation of under-represented groups in scientific careers. Each year of the project we specifically intend to hire at least one minority student into the undergraduate research fellowships that are budgeted in this proposal. Several specific recruiting avenues are available to the project. The Summer Research Internship Program for minority high school and undergraduate students is sponsored by the ISU College of Agriculture Minority Programs Office (http://www.ag.iastate.edu/student/minority.html). For six to eight weeks, students are matched with faculty mentors and have the opportunity to conduct research in areas that interest them. Recruitment specifically into our project can be a priority of the college program if funds are made available from this proposal. A similar program for recruitment of women undergraduates and high school students exists in the ISU Program for Women in Science and Engineering. The Department of BBMB has established a partnership with the Tuskegee University/NSF-HBCU Undergraduate Program in which students from the historically black undergraduate institution are selected by Tuskegee for research fellowships and placed in departmental laboratories. Finally, the department has specifically committed to host undergraduates from Fort Valley State University in undergraduate research internships, as part of a set of pending proposals made by Fort Valley State to support this activity. From these four formal programs, and informal interactions that can be established within the same groups if funds to support students can be provided from the current proposal, we are hopeful that we will be able to attract at least one minority or woman undergraduate intern to the project each year.

The proposed research offers significant potential benefits to society at large. Starch provides the majority of calories in the human diet. It also is a renewable resource that can supply reduced carbon for energy production, and a wide variety of industrial materials applications. The better we understand the basic molecular mechanisms by which plants produce and utilize starch, the greater ability we will have to exploit this renewable resource to meet the demands of our changing society over the coming decades.