Grant puts BCC students on the trail of a crop killer

Bellevue Community College students will get a taste of solving a crop killer, "CSI" style.

The criminal: a fungus that attacks plant roots — particularly wheat and barley — and can devastate an entire field with a disease called Take-All.

Although few at the community-college level have the opportunity to engage in genetic-research projects, a $478,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to BCC will allow students to do hands-on DNA sequencing.

By using this method, which is also used by the hit TV show's crime-solving forensic scientists, students will analyze genes of a specific bacterium, which is not being studied by other researchers.

Because the organism has shown potential for protecting crops from the fungus, students will attempt to find how it benefits plants.

With competition from four-year universities and independent research labs, grants awarded to two-year schools are rare, said Gita Bangera, the project's director and BCC Life Science instructor.

Each year, BCC receives about $5 million in grants, the majority coming from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges and government organizations like the NSF, said Bob Adams, BCC spokesman. The college has received $9 million in NSF grants since 1995, most of which has gone to the creation of and projects for the school's National Workforce Center for Emerging Technologies, an institution that creates information technology educational programs, he added.

Bangera, who received a doctorate in microbiology at Washington State University, said her connections with Eastern Washington scientists and knowledge of this bacterium and the school's commitment to the program made BCC a good candidate for the award.

The project's main goal for Bangera is to change students' perceptions of science.

"I know how exciting it is to do research, but a lot of students don't know that so they don't know to aim for it," she said, adding that many students have trouble envisioning themselves as future scientists.

April Morgan, a 39-year-old student from Kirkland who hopes to enroll in the lab class, said she's already considering a change.

Now on track to transfer to the University of Washington's physician-assistant program, Morgan said she never thought about being a researcher or scientist before working with Bangera.

"A research way of thinking is really important no matter what career you choose," she said. "It lets [me] dive into an area that I may not have been thinking of going."

The bacterium, known as Pseudomonas fluorescens, will be provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service's (ARS) location in Pullman.

David M. Weller, an ARS research plant pathologist in Pullman, said he and his colleagues chose this organism for the project because of its importance to agriculture in the Northwest and throughout the world.

"It's a way of controlling [Take-All] disease that does not require the use of pesticides," Weller said. "We're very interested in learning everything we can about this particular organism."

Students will enter their findings in the GenBank Database, which is operated by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Their data will be available to scientists worldwide who are searching for solutions to protect crops susceptible to the disease, making the project a "win-win for everyone," Weller said.

Take-All disease is most common in temperate and arid wheat-growing climates, such as the Pacific Northwest and Western Europe. Yield losses can be as high as 80 percent in some U.S. crops and cost wheat producers throughout the country hundreds of millions of dollars, Weller said.

Although the class is still being developed, Bangera hopes it will be a standard six-credit science course with three hours of lecture and four hours of lab each week. About 10 students will be admitted to the course with the possibility of more openings after its first quarter, which is expected to be winter or spring 2008.

In addition to the lab class, Bangera hopes to offer a two-credit seminar class open to all students to discuss progress of the bacterium project and the latest developments in microbiology.

Meghan Peters: 206-464-8305 or mpeters@seattletimes.com