- Rozovsky wins prestigious NSF Early Career Award
- UD students meet alumni, experience 'closing bell' at NYSE
- Newark Police seek assistance in identifying suspects in robbery
- Rivlin says bipartisan budget action, stronger budget rules key to reversing debt
- Stink bugs shouldn't pose problem until late summer
- Gao to honor Placido Domingo in Washington performance
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- WVUD's Radiothon fundraiser runs April 1-10
- W.D. Snodgrass Symposium to honor Pulitzer winner
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- UD in the News, March 25, 2011
- For the Record, March 25, 2011
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- A message to UD regarding the tragedy in Japan
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- March 31-May 14: REP stages Neil Simon's 'The Good Doctor'
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- April 5: Expert perspective on U.S. health care
- April 5: Comedian Ace Guillen to visit Scrounge
- April 6, May 4: School of Nursing sponsors research lecture series
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- April 6: IPCC's Pachauri to discuss sustainable development in DENIN Dialogue Series
- April 7: 'WVUDstock' radiothon concert announced
- April 8: English Language Institute presents 'Arts in Translation'
- April 9: Green and Healthy Living Expo planned at The Bob
- April 9: Center for Political Communication to host Onion editor
- April 10: Alumni Easter Egg-stravaganza planned
- April 11: CDS session to focus on visual assistive technologies
- April 12: T.J. Stiles to speak at UDLA annual dinner
- April 15, 16: Annual UD push lawnmower tune-up scheduled
- April 15, 16: Master Players series presents iMusic 4, China Magpie
- April 15, 16: Delaware Symphony, UD chorus to perform Mahler work
- April 18: Former NFL Coach Bill Cowher featured in UD Speaks
- April 21-24: Sesame Street Live brings Elmo and friends to The Bob
- April 30: Save the date for Ag Day 2011 at UD
- April 30: Symposium to consider 'Frontiers at the Chemistry-Biology Interface'
- April 30-May 1: Relay for Life set at Delaware Field House
- May 4: Delaware Membrane Protein Symposium announced
- May 5: Northwestern University's Leon Keer to deliver Kerr lecture
- May 7: Women's volleyball team to host second annual Spring Fling
- Through May 3: SPPA announces speakers for 10th annual lecture series
- Through May 4: Global Agenda sees U.S. through others' eyes; World Bank president to speak
- Through May 4: 'Research on Race, Ethnicity, Culture' topic of series
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- Through May 11: 'Challenges in Jewish Culture' lecture series announced
- Through May 11: Area Studies research featured in speaker series
- Through June 5: 'Andy Warhol: Behind the Camera' on view in Old College Gallery
- Through July 15: 'Bodyscapes' on view at Mechanical Hall Gallery
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- Middle States evaluation team on campus April 5
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- Senior wins iPad for participating in assessment study
- April 19: Procurement Services schedules information sessions
- UD Bookstore announces spring break hours
- HealthyU Wellness Program encourages employees to 'Step into Spring'
- April 8-29: Faculty roundtable series considers student engagement
- GRE is changing; learn more at April 15 info session
- April 30: UD Evening with Blue Rocks set for employees
- Morris Library to be open 24/7 during final exams
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11:28 a.m., Sept. 8, 2009----Plants that live in the soil don't live alone -- a mere teaspoon of soil teems with an estimated billion microscopic organisms.
Yet comparatively little is known about which of these tiny organisms interact with plants or how they may affect plant performance and crop yields, according to Harsh Bais, assistant professor of plant and soil sciences at the University of Delaware.
With a three-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation, Bais is teaming up with researchers from the University of California Davis and Delaware State University to uncover the diversity and potential impacts of microbes that literally lie at the roots of rice, one of the world's most important food crops.
More than half the world's population -- over 3 billion people -- depend on rice for survival, according to the International Rice Commission.
“What is the importance of the involvement of microbes in plants? It hasn't really been examined,” Bais notes. “We think that plants are doing everything on their own, but there is a whole world of microbes underground, associated with the roots of plants, that has yet to be analyzed.”
Scientists have long known the symbiotic relationship between legume plants such as beans and the bacteria known as rhizobia that colonize the plants' roots and enable the plants to convert nitrogen from the air into fertilizer.
More recently, in research reported last fall, Bais and his colleagues showed that when the leaves of the small flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana were infected by a pathogen, the plant secreted an acid to recruit beneficial bacteria in the soil (Bacillus subtilis) to come to its defense.
The study caught the attention of plant biologist Venkatesan Sundaresan and evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen at the University of California Davis, who are Bais's co-investigators on the rice grant.
Venugopal Kalavacharla, assistant professor of agriculture and natural resources at Delaware State University, and Gurdev Khush, an agronomist and geneticist at the University of California Davis, also are collaborators.
During the coming months, Bais will be working to set up a hydroponic method for growing rice in laboratories at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. His colleagues in California will be growing rice in the field and supplying plant and soil samples to Bais's lab for microbial and genetic analysis.
A controlled experimental system will be established to dissect the impact of microbial associations on rice. Transcriptomic and metabolic profiling will reveal the genes actively being expressed by the plants in response to a variety of conditions.
The profiles will be analyzed for global changes in gene expression, as well as specific functional classes of genes that would reflect changes in nutrient availability, or establishment of plant immunity, for example, which can be confirmed by metabolic analysis and susceptibility to pathogens.
“A comprehensive understanding of the effects of root-associated microbes -- what we refer to as the microbiome -- on crop plants will enable the development of agricultural technologies that exploit the natural alliances among microbes and plants and may provide new avenues to increase yields beyond conventional plant genetics and breeding,” Bais says. “We are very excited to get started on this research.”
As part of the project, an undergraduate internship program in cutting-edge plant science will be developed for outstanding students from Delaware State University and Delaware Technical and Community College. An innovative “Field To Lab” program spanning agricultural sampling to bioinformatics will provide students with the opportunity to participate in field and laboratory studies of rice biology at both UD and the University of California Davis. The internship program is slated to begin next summer.
Article by Tracey Bryant