MADISON, WISCONSIN 53715-1218
TINY EARTH SUMMER RESEARCH COURSE: HUMAN DIVERSITY DISCOVERING CHEMICAL DIVERSITY IN SOIL
NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: The project addresses the educational and workforce need to bring more students enrolled in two-year colleges and members of underrepresented minorities into agricultural sciences. We propose to accomplish this through an undergraduate research program that engages students in summer research at a land grant university.The research goal is to provide a pipeline of new antimicrobials for enhancing crop and livestock health.We built Tiny Earth, a research course that crowdsources antimicrobial discovery with college students as the research workforce. The Tiny Earth course is taught at all types of colleges and universities worldwide to more than 10,000 students annually. In the course, students isolate bacteria from soil (the richest known source of antimicrobial compounds) and screen them for the ability to kill plant and animal pathogens. W