BIOL 189T Fungal Biology
Alija Mujic, California State University-Fresno
The diversity, community structure, and functional diversity of fungi in the high Sierra is understudied and is largely unknown from the Sierra Nevada foothills. Through use of direct field sampling I will engage BIOL189T students in sampling efforts to elucidate the fungal biology of these understudied habitats. Students will sample fungal sporocarps (mushrooms) from existing field plots established by the National Environmental Observation Network (NEON) and use morphological identification techniques and DNA barcoding methods to identify the fungal diversity in these habitats. Future iterations of the course will likely focus upon selected fungal taxa identified in previous iterations of the course to investigate the phenology and ecological interactions of the fungal community in these habitats in NEON plots.

Designing Authentic Undergraduate Experiences in Research (DAUER)
Joseph Ross, California State University-Fresno
In this research experience, students will learn about how inheritance of diverse genetic material from their parents can impact the health (fecundity) of offspring. Students will design experiments to mate pairs of populations from a diverse global collection of microscopic worms and measure and compare the fecundities of their hybrid offspring.

Mutant Frogs, Hormones, & Genes: Using gene editing to investigate the molecular basis for hormone regulated development
Carla Fresquez, University of California-Davis
Students will investigate a most remarkable example of hormone action in nature: amphibian metamorphosis. They'll observe development of our model, Xenopus laevis, from fertilized egg to swimming tadpole, at which point they can simply add thyroid hormone to induced early metamorphosis. In this iteration of the CURE, students will characterize TALEN induced thyroid hormone receptor mutant lines, including the development of simple and reproducible PCR screening methods for genotyping the large numbers of embryos that result from mating in Xenopus, an advantage of the system if rapid genotyping can be developed. At the conclusion of the CURE, students will appreciate the amphibian life cycle and how the same hormone can cause drastically different cellular, tissue, and organ changes. They will also contribute directly to research on the role of different receptors in mediating those changes, specifically developing rapid PCR screening methods to identify tadpoles with genome editing induced mutations in specific receptor types.