IU professor receives $2.6 million grant to study disease resistance in soybean genes

Through hallways lined with displays of scientific conclusions stands the office of biology professor Roger Innes, the winner of a $2.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation for the study of disease resistant genes in soybean plants\nThe three-year grant, which was issued Sept. 1, permits a collaborative team of five scientists from all over the country to uncover the evolution of this disease-resistant gene. \nInnes said he was surprised his group was selected because the competition was very competitive. \nDr. Nevin Young, one of Innes' team members and professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, said he had a different reaction.\n"I was pleased, but wasn't surprised because I thought it was a very strong proposal from the start," he said.\nThe team of scientists came together in June 2002 while four of the five of them were attending a meeting.\n"We kind of talked about what would we want to do if we could send an application to this program and we got excited talking about it there, so we decided to go for it," Innes said. \nIU, Minnesota, Cornell University, Virginia Tech and the University of Oklahoma are represented on the team that will be conducting the research. \nOnce they get started, the team membes will be determining the DNA sequence of a chunk of a genome of soy.\n"By doing this, we will figure out how they actually trigger defense processes in the plant," Young said. \nUnlike normal biological research, Innes said they're not interested in testing anything in a tube. \n"We're mostly concerned with attaining the sequence of all the genes in this region and then comparing it to the equivalent regions of several other species of legumes," Innes said. "And the ultimate goal, by doing this comparison, is we'll learn a lot about how these genes evolve."\nInnes has a special interest in how genes change over time, so the team will compare the gene content of different species to find out exactly how the genes came to be in their current form.\n"This is something we haven't done much," Innes said. "There will probably be about 200 genes that we'll be comparing all at once among 10 different species. This is a whole new way of thinking, instead of looking at only one gene at a time."\nYoung described their research as a kind of "landmark or break-through."\n"This particular project is exciting because it's one of the first projects that look at such a big group of genes," he said. "It's also exciting because this is what we've spent most of our life on."\nInnes said he has both personal and long-term societal goals for the project.\n"What I want to personally answer is how rapidly the disease resistance genes change. They may be changing really fast, or they may be changing really slowly," he said. "By looking at this, we'll be able to really see how they're changing, and that will tell us a lot more about how these genes actually work to confer to disease resistance, and may help us ultimately engineer crops that are more resistant to disease."\nWith the help of Innes' research, chemicals could possibly be eliminated from the soybean growing process, saving approximately $1.7 billion in the United States alone. \n"And for developing countries, it may even just mean having enough food," Innes said.\n-- Contact staff writer Stacie Vasko at svasko@indiana.edu.