Supplement 1998

Research Experience forUndergraduates

REU Supplement 1998

In 1998 an REU supplement was awarded to the NSF award DEB-9714276 - "Combining culturing and non-culturing approaches for the isolation of prokaryotes from a hyper arid desert environment"

The REU supplement provided a stipend and supplies for Keren Ray, an undergraduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences at Louisiana State University to gain research experience in the Rainey Lab

The REU supplement of 1998 was used to support Keren Ray who studied the bacterial populations surviving ionizing radiation exposure in soils from arid and hyper arid environments. Keren was involved in all aspects of this project including isolation and enumeration of microorganisms, long term preservation of isolates, strain collection data base management, molecular identification and characterization of novel isolates and phylogenetic analyses of molecular sequence data. More than 300 strains were isolated from soils exposed to various level of ionizing radiation. During the summer of 1998 Keren gained experience in the use of PCR machines, an automated sequencer and a SUN work station.

Keren presented a poster entitled: –

"Determination of the numbers and diversity of ionizing radiation resistant bacteria in soil"

at the joint annual meeting of the Southeastern and South Central Branches of ASM (October 1998).

The results obtained were also included in an invited seminar given by the PI (Rainey) and a poster presented at the Eighth International Symposium on Microbial Ecology in Halifax, Canada, August 1998.