Week 1

Hey guys. 

I should probably first talk about what I am going to be doing with this Senior Research Project. I am going to be interning at the University of Arizona Genomics Lab under my supervisor Dave Kudrna and my mentor Naomi Rhodes, who is an undergraduate at the U of A, and I will working on plant genomes, specifically, on rice from the genus Oryza. I will be focusing on the shattering trait of these genomes. 

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do much at the laboratory because there have been issues with my lab safety training. I finished half of it, which was the Laboratory Chemical Safety Training, but there have been problems with the other half which is the biosafety training. I hope to resolve the issue by early next week (Monday or Tuesday) and start working in the laboratory. After resolving the issue and finishing my training, I can have a set schedule for my internship. 

On the other hand, I got my own little office space. I will be doing some of my research, reading, and writing there (and at home ^-^). I also did some reading on my topic, and as I was reading, some of the papers and articles answer questions like "Why are we studying this?" and "Why should we care?"

This project with the Oryza rice genomes hopes to answer part of the "9 billion-people" question. According to the article "The 9 billion-people question" in The Economist, it is estimated that by 2050, our world population will have increased from almost 7 billion to 9 billion people. Sooo...how will we feed all these people? When we look at our food supply compared to even today's population, we can barely feed everybody (and the food prices are not helping). This crisis brings up Malthusian fears and if we keep this up then how are we going to feed 9 billion people in 40 years? Well, rice, especially Asian rice (known as Oryza sativa), feeds more than any other crop in the world, and the rice-dependent population is expected to at least double in the next 25 years. Therefore, scientists must find a way to produce/grow twice as much rice as efficiently as possible. So, how is shattering related to this? Well, first, you might ask, "what is shattering?" (I mean, I kept using the word, I should at least define it or give some background, right?) "Seed shattering is an adaptive trait for seed dispersal in wild plants...[and it] causes yield loss for domesticated crop plants during harvest." Our ancestors began domesticating rice when they started selecting rice with less shattering (Zhou et al. 1). Reducing shattering in wild rice species may be a way to help domesticate rice making it easier to harvest. So we also get into some evolution and history of Oryza rice plants. 

Although I haven't been able to do all the fun lab stuff yet, I am really looking forward to doing experiments and learning about the thing that I eat most at home (RICE!). 

I hope you all have a great weekend and for my fellow seniors, another fantastic week at your internships. I will look forward to your postings. Until then, ta-ta for now.