TRAINING IN BIOTECHNOLOGY: EMPHASIS ON PROTEIN CHEMISTRY

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This application is for renewal of the Biotechnology Training Grant first awarded to Washington State University in 1989, the first year of the NIH-funded Predoctoral Program. The grant was competitively renewed in 1994 and we now apply for the next 5-year period. Since our previous renewal, the prominence of our training faculty has been highlighted by honors including two elections to the National Academy of Sciences and our trainees have initiated a pattern of achievement. Our cross- disciplinary program has a major emphasis on protein chemistry, an area of prominence at WSU and of central importance to biotechnology. Twenty- fix faculty from six degree-grant units in four Colleges (Agriculture, Engineering, Sciences and Veterinary Medicine) provide depth and breadth in this area and will serve as preceptors for trainee research. Trainees participate in a core of training involving laboratory rotations, courses, seminars, journal clubs, industrial internships and biotechnology symposia. Of particular note are an innovate biotechnology course organized around development of biotechnology proposals by groups of students, the use of laboratory rotations to establish interdisciplinary contact and an enthusiastically received internship program. The program has significant flexibility in options for degree programs among Biochemistry/Biophysics, Chemical Engineering, Genetics and Cell Biology, Microbiology, Plant Physiology, and Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology. Each year five new trainees will enter the program. Salary support will be provided for the first two years by Training Grant funds supplemented by institutional funds and for subsequent years by institutional funds and for subsequent years by funds available to preceptors. At any one time, approximately 30 students will be involved in training. The institution is strongly committed to the training program and continues to provide financial support. The training faculty has a strong record of competitive research funding and of training productive and prominent scientists and engineers. In the initial none years, we have enrolled a diverse group of high quality students including a significant number of women and minorities. Graduated trainees have taken competitive positions as postdoctoral researchers and subsequently long-term positions in biotechnology. The program provides state-of-the-art training in basic science relevant to biotechnology and an education in the applied aspects of biotechnology, both with an emphasis on protein chemistry, and thus produces scientists and engineers with sound interdisciplinary backgrounds, qualified to meet major needs of biotechnology.