Noble Foundation researcher receives $1 million grant

NEWS RELEASE
Issued - August 27, 2010

ARDMORE, Okla. — A Noble Foundation researcher recently received a $1,183,305 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Patrick Zhao, Ph.D., associate professor, will use the NSF grant to advance his study in bioinformatics, a scientific field that uses computers to analyze large amounts of data from biological experiments.

"NSF grants are highly competitive," said Richard Dixon, D.Phil., director of the Plant Biology Division. "Receiving this grant speaks volumes about the research Dr. Zhao is performing, as well as the importance of bioinformatics. Using computers to process data allows scientists to ask questions that require so much information that the human mind simply could not manage."

As part of the NSF funded project, Zhao's research group will seek to understand the regulatory networks between the thousands of genes that control plant development and its interaction with the environment. This mega project will involve mining relationships among tens of thousands of genes (genetic codes) and their expression profiles (when such genes are active or not active in different parts of the plant for different times) in multiple (model) crop species.

The project will look at how the genes impact each other. This interaction is highly complex and dynamic, and is difficult to decode. However, in the future, Noble Foundation scientists hope to apply the knowledge generated from this project to production crop species, such as alfalfa, to improve the quality of forage.

"The sheer volume of genes involved and the highly complex nature of their interactions makes deciphering the gene regulatory networks a challenging task," Zhao said. "However, through bioinformatics, we want to develop innovative methods to understand these plant gene regulatory interactions and fulfill the needs of the plant biology research community. We also hope that this work will lead to the development of better economically important crops in the future."

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For media inquiries concerning the Noble Foundation, please contact:

J. Adam Calaway

jacalaway@noble.org

The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Inc. (www.noble.org), headquartered in Ardmore, Okla., is a nonprofit organization conducting agricultural, forage improvement and plant biology research; assisting farmers and ranchers through educational and consultative agricultural programs; and providing grants to nonprofit charitable, educational and health organizations.