Faculty Development Plan
Integrative Biology
2006
My experience in research extends over the past 27 years, with close to 70 publications and 10 patents. I have mentored many students over the course of 21 years, but my classroom teaching experience is limited to having taught early morning seminary for two years, which was enjoyable. I currently have no BYU citizenship responsibilities as it seems outside my realm of duties and responsibilities. The following is proposed from my background.
Strengths
Student mentoring
International collaborations
Research and more research
That which needs improvement
Time management
Grantsmanship
Classroom teaching
Student Mentoring
Student mentoring is a privilege that I have enjoyed since 1984 when working at Mycogen Corporation. I teach no classes, but I do fill the roll of mentor by working with students coming to the DNA Sequencing Center looking for projects and training. These are students seeking to broaden their BYU experience. I do have contacts in the research community that I feel can meet most any demand. For example XXX, working with me for InBio494R research credit, has a long-term goal of establishing a biomedical research lab in China. Upon expressing this interest to me and asking if I had any leads on doing an internship in China for 2006 summer, I quickly e-mailed a former post-doctoral colleague from China (now working in Los Angeles), who was willing to find him a position for the summer in China. In the few intervening days while collecting this information, XXX had already found a contact by attending a session of the American Society of Human Genetics (at my request) being held in Salt Lake City and happened upon the team leader of the Chinese portion of the human haplotype mapping project in Beijing. XXX now has the desired summer internship. I find this rewarding and helpful. At some point I will better know what limitations there are in working with BYU students, but this will take some time to discover. I also mentor students hired to work at the DNA Sequencing Center, who are looking to establish themselves in many different fields revolving around knowledge of and working with DNA. We are working closely together and often talk about goals and dreams for the future. I am happy to offer advice and guidance.
A broad goal on this topic is to always make time to help those students either working at the DNASC or working with me for research credit.
As manager of the DNA Sequencing Center my goals are
1. Upgrade the DNASC home page with at least our current practices and appropriate links and at the same time correcting grammatical and spelling errors.
2. Work out a solution to our billing problems that is web based and with less labor involved.
3. Develop a half-day training course to be offered once a semester in DNA sequencing and possibly a second half-day training course for fragment analysis. These would be offered to new students every semester (fall, winter and spring).
International Collaborations
My current strength in research is in the contacts made over the past 15 years in India, Pakistan and Iran. There are people in all three countries willing to help enroll families segregating various inherited disorders. The impact of being able to simplify the study of inherited traits (be they simple highly heterogeneous Mendelian traits or more complex traits) can be demonstrated by the progress deCODE Corporation has made in mapping many different inherited traits after having its proposal to the Icelandic government accepted (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1 /hi/sci/tech/630961.stm). In this year’s February issue of Nature Genetics, deCODE published data on a specific mutation accounting for some 21% of attributable risk for diabetes type II in European populations, based on first looking for such a gene among the Icelandic people and then applying the information discovered to more diverse populations.
I have a collaboration formalized with XXX, Assistant Professor, School of Biological Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. I would like to formalize a similar study with the Center for Excellence in Molecular Biology, the premier institution in Pakistan for the continued performance of such work. The Centre is a federally funded institute working on the frontiers of molecular biological research through collaborations with laboratories in Europe and the US. I need to emphasize the importance of including the Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology in genetic studies undertaken in Pakistan. Half of all marriages in Pakistan are consanguineous, the power to detect linkage more than doubles when working with samples from such families. Often, each family represents a unique genetic isolate and hence simplifies immensely the enormity of such studies.
My goal is to establish a collaborative research project with the Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology while further establishing the project already started with the XXX at the School of Biological Sciences.
Research, and More Research
The point in research is to advance understanding. This applies to the human condition as well as to many others. Another reason for research is to help students master concepts and techniques important to their understanding of what they are learning in the classroom. It is the latter that I hope to emphasize at BYU. Students need to be able to understand and address the concepts about which they are learning in the classroom. To this end, I am describing two research projects and goals that I will seek to advance over the next 5 years.
XXX, who left NIH employment last summer to accept a position as an Assistant Professor at the School of Biological Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan, is excited over the prospect of enrolling families segregating cleft lip with or without cleft palate. She has talked with several surgeons and finds there are large numbers of children undergoing operations and yet no research being done on family history of those undergoing this surgery. Certainly there are other researchers in the world looking at cleft-lip with or without cleft palate using many different approaches to study this problem. Using DNA from consanguineous Pakistani families greatly increases the power to detect the genes responsible for this deformity. I have applied for and received a Mentored Environmental Grant (MEG) to start this project. Two of the students working with me for InBio494R research credit received a shared ORCA award to help them through such studies. I have also applied for a Faculty Research Grant from the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies to help XXX pay for necessary costs associated with enrolling subjects, extracting DNA from blood and the postage costs for mailing DNA samples from Pakistan to BYU. I was granted an exemption by the BYU-IRB for a population study on marker heterozygosity and have submitted for BYU-IRB approval to enroll Pakistani patients inheriting cleft lip with or without cleft palate. This second request will also be sent to the IRB at the School for Biological Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan for their approval. Through such resources and applications we are hoping to start and maintain this project. My goal is to publish a set of markers suitable for linkage analysis in Pakistani families and have at least one publication on loci segregating among Pakistani families with cleft lip with or without cleft palate.
A project only now being conceptualized is to work with the Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology to enroll families with diabetes (be they type I or type II). Such a project will provide further entry of BYU students into complex human genetic disorders and provide the basis for a collaborative research project. It will maintain a working relationship with the most important research center in Pakistan. As has already been demonstrated by deCODE Corp., population isolates are extremely important in dissecting apart complex human traits. Such a project would be independent of Dr. Riazuddin’s (Director, Centre of Excellence of Molecular Biology) personal research interests in several different inherited disorders. If such a study is started and there is data to test in other populations, it is important to keep in mind the ramifications for Native American populations, which have a very high burden of diabetes type II. Verification of loci and genes discovered among Pakistani family studies can be tested in various different sample collections that we at BYU could undertake from different Native American populations. An additional ramification of having a large sample collection from different Native American populations is that it gives investigators at BYU the opportunity to extensively examine these DNA samples using the latest haplotype maps (published in the 27 October, 2005 issue of Nature, in particular see figures 7 and 8) to look at genealogical relationships among haplotypes in Native American populations and be able to contribute towards the current literature of how many peoples actually inhabited the Americas before Columbus arrived. For such a project to be successful, several collaborations beyond that with the Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology will be needed. For example, we will need a formal collaboration with a geneticist/epidemiologist. I do not know if such expertise exists at BYU, but this is worth exploring with the Statistics help group at BYU. Another possibility that comes to mind is XXX (Associate Professor, Department of Genetics, Rutgers University), with whom I have had discussions in the past. My goal is to formalize a research project with XXX over the coming year and then take steps to arrange for appropriate collaborators to; enroll diabetic Native Americans and appropriate control subjects, handle issues of genetic epidemiology, work with haplotype maps and other genetic information examining genealogical relationships.
Time management
One way I try to maximize my contribution to the laboratories in which I work is that I arise each morning, Monday through Saturday, at 4:30 A.M. I return home for breakfast about 7:00 A.M., shower and return to continue work. My goal is to keep up to date on the vast literature dealing with human genetics. This same goal also applies to DNA sequencing and fragment analysis technology in which technological advances can rapidly change the way we do research. This is especially important as methods of sequencing whole genomes for under $1,000 are being developed.
Grantsmanship
I do have a serious issue in writing grants. I have been writing and editing publications for many years, but this is different than writing grants. Both Mycogen and NIH justified their research to various governing bodies, but the money was there to be wisely spent. I will need suitable data on which to write these grants, which in large part is tied to the kinds of families enrolled in Pakistan. XXX is dedicated to helping us and I assume the same will hold true for XXX. There were 3 undergraduate students working with me Fall, 2005, 6 in Winter semester 2006 and 3 this Spring. We are making progress towards our objectives of having suitable markers for linkage analysis in Pakistani families. My goal is obtain at least one major grant in the next five-year period. The closest target is a grant to NIDCR, which funds craniofacial research projects. For research to progress with XXX, I may have to approach several companies for what was called at NIH a “CRADA”, a joint venture between industry and BYU, but by far my preferred approach would be seek USAID money.
Teaching
I have no classroom teaching experience, though I don’t think this is a formal part of my position at BYU. As part of my BYU experience, I will volunteer to teach a Book of Mormon religion class in the next 5-year period.