WNY Genetics in Research Partnership: Expanding Exposure, Career Exploration and Interactive Projects in Basic Genome Analysis and Bioinformatics

WNY Genetics 研究合作伙伴关系：扩大基础基因组分析和生物信息学领域的接触、职业探索和互动项目

• 批准号: 1311902
• 负责人: Stephen Koury
• 金额: $ 113.66万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Buffalo
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-15 至 2017-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1311902&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: WNY; Genetics; Research; Partnership; Expanding

This project will develop an ongoing partnership with disadvantaged schools across a 14-county region of New York that will facilitate teacher and student recruitment, preparation, and mentorship for careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Project activities will focus on basic genome analysis and bioinformatics, and the partnership will be directed by the University at Buffalo Department of Biotechnical and Clinical Laboratory Sciences (BCLS) and the New York State Area Health Education Center System (NYS AHEC). Thirty biology teachers annually from partnering schools will attend a two-week summer workshop at the University at Buffalo where they will receive training in use of the Integrated Microbial Genomes Annotation Collaboration Toolkit (IMG-ACT) of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute. During Semester I of each school year of the project, NYS AHEC will organize college and career exploration sessions to familiarize students with the gene annotation project and to provide a "real world" context. Students will develop career plans by the end of Semester I as well as indicate their interest in participating in gene annotation activities during Semester II. During Semester II, each teacher will work with at least 5 students (150 total per year) on a genome annotation project using the IMG-ACT. Each spring, a Capstone Symposium will be held, bringing participating students and teachers together to present their projects and to interact with university faculty, researchers and bioscience employers. Formative and summative evaluation activities will be conducted for all teacher and student participants who participated in multiple years of the project to assess broader based outcomes related to changes in knowledge, behavior and dispositions toward STEM-related careers.Bioinformatics is in a period of rapid growth, and genomics is becoming increasingly important to the life sciences and health care practices. Genetic and genomic research are expanding throughout the biological sciences, and bioinformatics is providing tools for enhanced understanding of health and improvements in prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. Growth has been so rapid that some areas are experiencing shortages of trained researchers, and the health professions have been challenged to keep up with developments. Moreover, this era of great research potential coincides with a trend of declining student interest in science, and the nation has had particular difficulty addressing minority underrepresentation in STEM fields. There is an urgent need for teacher and student exposure to science role models, as well as instructional approaches that allow students to work with real scientific data and tools, and to make connections between what they are studying and the problems their families and communities are facing. As students and teachers perform the gene annotations associated with this project they will simultaneously be learning to use public domain bioinformatics software and conducting a research project. They will experience the excitement of making novel discoveries, as well as some of the uncertainty associated with any scientific experiment. They will learn to question assumptions and to formulate and test hypotheses about the genes they are annotating, rather than simply performing scripted laboratory exercises. It is expected that the hands-on approach to learning and basic bioinformatics research, along with the STEM related career exploration sessions and continued NYS AHEC support of student participants, will motivate students, and better prepare them to seek out academic programs and careers in STEM-related areas. Teachers will obtain professional development and training in basic bioinformatics that can then be incorporated into their general classroom teaching.

该项目将与纽约州14个县地区的弱势学校建立持续的伙伴关系，促进教师和学生的招聘、准备和科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）职业指导。项目活动将侧重于基本基因组分析和生物信息学，合作伙伴关系将由布法罗大学生物技术和临床实验室科学系（BCLS）和纽约州地区健康教育中心系统（NYS AHEC）指导。来自合作学校的30名生物教师每年将参加在布法罗大学举行的为期两周的夏季研讨会，在那里他们将接受有关使用美国能源部联合基因组研究所的综合微生物基因组注释协作工具包（IMG-ACT）的培训。在项目每学年的第一学期，NYS AHEC将组织大学和职业探索课程，让学生熟悉基因注释项目，并提供“真实世界”的背景。学生将在第一学期结束时制定职业规划，并表明他们有兴趣参加第二学期的基因注释活动。在第二学期，每位老师将与至少5名学生（每年150人）一起使用IMG-ACT进行基因组注释项目。每年春天，将举行一次顶点研讨会，将参与的学生和教师聚集在一起，展示他们的项目，并与大学教师、研究人员和生物科学雇主进行互动。形成性和总结性评估活动将对参与多年项目的所有教师和学生参与者进行，以评估与stem相关职业的知识、行为和倾向变化相关的更广泛的结果。生物信息学正处于快速增长的时期，基因组学对生命科学和卫生保健实践变得越来越重要。遗传和基因组研究正在扩展到整个生物科学领域，生物信息学正在为增进对健康的了解和改善疾病的预防、检测、诊断和治疗提供工具。增长如此之快，以至于一些领域出现了训练有素的研究人员短缺的问题，卫生专业人员也面临着跟上发展的挑战。此外，这个研究潜力巨大的时代恰逢学生对科学兴趣下降的趋势，而美国在解决STEM领域少数族裔代表性不足的问题上尤其困难。现在迫切需要教师和学生接触科学的榜样，以及允许学生使用真正的科学数据和工具的教学方法，并将他们正在学习的内容与他们的家庭和社区面临的问题联系起来。当学生和老师执行与此项目相关的基因注释时，他们将同时学习使用公共领域的生物信息学软件并进行研究项目。他们将体验到做出新发现的兴奋，以及与任何科学实验相关的一些不确定性。他们将学会对假设提出质疑，并对他们所注释的基因提出构想和检验假设，而不是简单地进行照本宣科的实验室练习。预计动手学习和基础生物信息学研究的方法，以及与STEM相关的职业探索会议和对学生参与者的持续支持，将激励学生，并更好地为他们寻求STEM相关领域的学术课程和职业做好准备。教师将获得基本生物信息学方面的专业发展和培训，然后将其纳入一般的课堂教学。