Class99

Research Experience forUndergraduates

The Class of Spring 1999

The aim of the Class of Spring 1999 is to bring together a group of undergraduate students who have indicated an interest in doing independent research in the Rainey Lab and give them an initial training in both classical and molecular techniques that they will use in their research efforts

During the first five weeks of the Spring 1999 semester the students will obtain hands-on experience in areas including: culture media preparation, enumeration of microorganisms, isolation of pure cultures, preservation of microorganisms and environmental samples, microscopy, DNA extraction, PCR, DNA sequencing, molecular characterization of environmental samples and determination of functional diversity of microbial communities

In the remaining 10 weeks of the Spring 1999 semester the students will be involved in individual laboratory based research projects. These projects will be centered around the research interests of the Rainey Lab which include "The cultured and uncultured prokaryotic diversity of arid and hyperarid soils", "The role of cultured and uncultured bacteria in biofilm formation in industrial cooling systems", "Molecular systematics of deep-branching phylogenetic lineages and their detection in the environment"