MGEL NEWS

  dot May 19, 2011: The Board of Trustees of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning grants official status to MS State's new Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing & Biotechnology (IGBB).  The IGBB was formed by the merger of MS State's Life Sciences & Biotechnology Institute (LSBI), for which MGEL's Daniel Peterson has been associate director since May 2009, and the Institute for Digital Biology (IDB).  Peterson will serve as the IGBB's Associate Director of Genomics.  The IGBB is a full member of MS State's prestigious High Performance Computing Collaboratory.  
  dot January 21, 2011: A manuscript entitled Adventures in the Enormous: A 1.8 Million Clone BAC Library for the 21.7 Gb Genome of Loblolly Pine is published in PLoS ONE.  Authors include MGELans Zenaida Magbanua, Benjamin Bartlett, Philippe Chouvarine, Seval Ozkan, and Daniel G. Peterson (see Publications).  
  dot January 15, 2011: MGEL's Daniel Peterson organizes and emcees the Evolution of Genome Size Workshop at Plant & Animal Genome (PAG) XIX.  Speakers include Heidi J. Pagan (MS State), Pat Heslop-Harrison (U. of Leicester), Jeffrey F.D. Dean (U. of Georgia), Rod A. Wing (U. of Arizona), and Frederic Choulet (INRA, France) (see Workshops).  
  dot January 1, 2011: Kurt Showmaker becomes the newest MGELan.  Mr. Showmaker has begun Ph.D. research in the lab of MGEL's Daniel Peterson.  
  dot July 2010: MGEL's Xueyan Shan accepts a faculty position in MS State's Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology.  Congratulations to Dr. Shan!  
  dot June 22, 2010: Daniel Peterson is co-author on a recent BMC Genomics papers describing the physical map of D-genome cotton (see Publications).  
  dot June 14-16, 2010: MGEL Director Daniel Peterson gives a plenary lecture at the FoResTTraC Conifer Genomics workshop in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), Spain.  
  dot June 11: 2010: A paper describing Cot filtration in the cattle tick is published in BMC Genomics (see Publications).  The research was performed by a group of scientists led by MGEL collaborator Felix Guerrero and including MGEL's Daniel Peterson.  
  dot May 25-30, 2010: MGEL's Daniel Peterson visits Belize to help build a new education and research partnership between Mississippi's EPSCoR program and various Belizean agencies, hospitals, and schools.  
  dot May 12-20, 2010: Dr. Felix Guerrero of the USDA-ARS's Livestock Insects Research Laboratory (Kerrville, TX) returns to MGEL to conduct Cot research on screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax) and horn fly (Haematobia irritans).  
  dot April 2010: MGEL's Daniel Peterson is co-author on a perspectives paper entitled Sequencing and Utilization of the Gossypium Genomes published in Tropical Plant Biology (see Publications).  
  dot March 24, 2010: Daniel Peterson gives a talk for the Digital Biology Learning Community at MS State entitled Death Awaits You All with Nasty Big Pointy Teeth!  The presentation focuses on crocodilian research being performed at MGEL through NSF MCB- 0841821.  
  dot February 19-20, 2010: Daniel Peterson attends The Eighth Annual Conference of the MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS).  Peterson presents two posters - Macroarray Reader: Automated detection and deconvolution of macroarray hybridization data and Transcriptome profiling of Miscanthus.  
  dot February 14-18, 2010: Drs. Carol Ritland and Kermit Ritland of the University of British Columbia visit MGEL and learn DNA reassociation kinetics techniques.  The Ritlands are collaborating with MGEL's Daniel Peterson on a study of the white spruce genome.  
  dot January 15, 2010: An NSF Gene & Genome Systems grant (MCB- 0841821) to study the evolution of crocodilian genomes is awarded to Dr. David Ray (PI; MS State), MGEL's Daniel Peterson (co-PI), Dr. Fiona McCarthy (co-PI; MS State), and Dr. Carl Schmidt (co-PI; U. of DE).  MGEL's portion of the project, which is being led by Dr. Xueyan Shan, involves construction of a BAC library for the gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) and comparison of orthologous gene regions between the Australian saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), gharial, chicken, zebrafinch, and green anole.  Dr. Shan previously constructed a 3.7X BAC library for the Australian saltwater crocodile.  Dr. Ray's lab will focus on transposable element evolution within Crocodylia while Dr. Schmidt and Dr. McCarthy will lead structural and functional annotation aspects of the research, respectively.  
  dot January 9, 2010: MGEL's Daniel Peterson organizes and emcees the Evolution of Genome Size Workshop at Plant & Animal Genome (PAG) XVIII.  Speakers include Andrew Paterson (U. of Georgia), Thomas Wicker (U. of Zurich), Ray Ming (U. of Illinois), Lisa Kanizay (U. of Georgia), and Nurul Islam-Faridi (US Forest Service).   
  dot January 1, 2010: MGEL's Zenaida V. Magbanua accepts a faculty position with MS State's Life Sciences & Biotechnology Institute.  Congratulations to Dr. Magbanua!  
  dot August 17, 2010: Mr. Benjamin Bartlett moves from the role of MGEL student worker to MGEL graduate student.  Mr. Bartlett is leading sequencing and structural annotation of the genome of Rotylenchulus reniformis, the reniform nematode (click here for more information).  
  dot August 7-11, 2010: Mr. Brian Caudle of Florida State University (FSU) visits MGEL and receives training in Cot techniques.  Mr. Caudle is working with FSU faculty members Drs. Emily Moriarty Lemmon and Chris Lemmon on a study looking at genomic diversity among amphibians.  
  dot August 2010: Former MGEL graduate student, Dr. Surya Saha, marries his sweetheart, Sujata Singh, and starts postdoctoral research in the lab of Dr. Magdalen Lindeberg at Cornell University.  Congratulations to Surya, Sujata, and Dr. Lindeberg!  
  dot July 14, 2009: A paper describing a crocodile BAC library and its utilization is published in BMC Genomics.  Authors include MGEL's Xueyan Shan and Daniel Peterson and collaborators David Ray (MS State) and John Bunge (Cornell University) - see Publications.  
  dot July 8, 2009: MGEL welcomes Dr. Felix Guerrero of the USDA-ARS's Livestock Insects Research Laboratory (Kerrville, TX).  Dr. Guerrero, who has been collaborating with MGEL in a study of the cattle tick genome (click here for project details), will spend a week learning how to do Cot filtration.  
  dot July 1, 2009: Daniel Peterson is appointed to the Editorial Board of Analytical Biochemistry.  
  dot June 25, 2009: Daniel Peterson gives a talk at the 17th International Chromosome Conference in Boone, North Carolina.  
  dot June 17, 2009: MGEL's Surya Saha successfully defends his Ph.D. dissertation on mining spatial relationships in genomic data.  Congratulations to Dr. Saha!  
  dot June 1, 2009: MGEL welcomes  Melanie Hill, Nisma Mujahid, and Calla Kingery.  Ms. Hill, a Tougaloo College student, will be conducting genomics research at MGEL throughout the summer (see MGEL/Tougaloo Partnership).  Ms. Mujahid will be conducting pine genomics research under the supervision of MGEL's Zenaida Magbanua.  Ms. Kingery, who will be starting college at Delta State University in the fall, will be working with Ms. Hill, visiting scientist Lisa Kanizay (see below), and MGEL's Xueyan Shan.  
  dot June 1, 2009: We welcome Lisa Kanizay, a graduate student from Dr. Kelly Dawe's lab at the University of Georgia.  Ms. Kanizay is working with MGEL's Xueyan Shan to construct and screen a BAC library for a Zea mays line containing Abnormal Chromosome 10 (Ab10).  
  dot May 15, 2009: A paper describing an improved means of analyzing Cot curve data is published in Analytical Biochemistry.  MGEL's Philippe Chouvarine and Daniel Peterson are co-authors (see Publications).  
  dot May 1, 2009: MGEL's Daniel Peterson is named Associate Director of MS State's Life Sciences & Biotechnology Institute (LSBI).  Peterson will lead the LSBI's nucleic acids research initiatives/programs.  
  dot February 5, 2009: A paper presenting novel data on genome evolution in loblolly pine is published in PLoS ONE.  MGEL's Daniel Peterson and Zenaida Magbanua are co-authors (see Publications).  
  dot January 28, 2009: The Sorghum bicolor genome sequence is published in Nature.  MGEL's Daniel Peterson is a co-author (see Publications).  
  dot January 10, 2009: MGEL's Daniel Peterson organizes the Evolution of Genome Size Workshop at Plant & Animal Genome (PAG) XVII .  Speakers include Stephen Stack (Colo. State), Trude Schwarzacher (U. of Leichester), Jennifer Hawkins (U. of Georgia), and David Ray (W. Virginia Univ.).  Additionally, Peterson gives a talk entitled Gymnosperms: Evolution in 3/4 Time.  
  dot January 10-14, 2009: MGELans Xueyan Shan, Surya Saha, and Daniel Peterson attend Plant & Animal Genome (PAG) XVII.  Two workshop talks and five posters highlight MGEL research projects.  
  dot December 12, 2008: MGEL's Supaphan Thummasuwan is hooded by Ph.D. advisor Daniel Peterson at the Mississippi State University Fall 2008 Commencement Ceremony!  Congratulations to Dr. Thummasuwan who will soon be headed to her native Thailand and a faculty position at Naresuan University.  
  dot November 4, 2008: Sir Richard J. Roberts, 1993 Nobel Laureate, visits Mississippi State University and gives two lectures.  Dr. Roberts, who was invited to visit MS State by MGEL's Daniel Peterson, also spent an hour talking with students in Peterson's Genomes and Genomics class.  Click here for more information on Dr. Robert's visit.  
  dot July 2, 2008: The Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (JGI) announces that it will sequence 100 loblolly pine BAC clones through its "Community Sequencing Program."  The pine BAC sequencing project, which is led by MGEL's Daniel Peterson, will increase understanding of the pine genome and improve pine's utility as a bioenergy and carbon sequestration crop (see JGI Press Release).  
  dot June 13, 2008: MGEL's Daniel Peterson is made a Distinguished Fellow of Mississippi State's Life Sciences and Biotechnology Institute (LSBI).  Peterson is one of only four MS State faculty members to receive this honor (see photo of Peterson with MS State VP Melissa Mixon).  
  dot May 21, 2008: MGEL welcomes 2008 Summer Interns Aerielle Booker, Erica Jackson, and Whitney Logan.  The research being conducted by these Tougaloo College juniors is funded by the Mississippi Functional Genomics Network.  
  dot May 19-21, 2008: MGELans Surya Saha, Xueyan Shan, and Daniel Peterson participate in the Delivering Values from Avian Genomics conference hosted by the Institute for Digital Biology at MS State.  Drs. Shan and Peterson, in collaboration with invited speaker David Ray (WVU)  present the results of their research on crocodilians.  Mr. Saha gives a talk on mining spatial proximity relationships among dispersed repeat sequences in the chicken genome.  
  dot April 23, 2008: A poster by MGEL's Surya Saha is awarded first place in the Physical Sciences category at the 6th Annual Graduate Student Association Research Symposium (Mississippi State University).  
  dot April 18, 2008: MGEL's Benjamin Bartlett gives a talk on his reniform nematode research at the Tougaloo College/Mississippi College Student Symposium.   
  dot April 17, 2008: Daniel Peterson gives a talk entitled "MGEL: Battling Monster Genomes Since 2002" to Tougaloo College students.  
  dot March 12, 2008: Acclaimed cytogeneticist and MGEL collaborator Nurul Islam-Faridi visits MGEL/MS State.  
  dot February 2008: The papers "Empirical comparison of ab initio repeat finding programs" and "Computational approaches and tools used in identification of dispersed repetitive DNA sequences" are published in Nucleic Acids Research and Tropical Plant Biology, respectively.  Authors are MGELans Surya Saha, Zenaida Magbanua, and Daniel Peterson and MGEL collaborator Susan Bridges (see Publications).  
  dot February 2008: Congratulations to MGEL postdocs Xueyan Shan and Zenaida Magbanua for publishing peer-reviewed papers on research they conducted before joining the MGEL team.  In 2007 Dr. Magbanua published one paper on Aspergillus-resistance in maize (Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions) while Dr. Shan published three papers on QTL mapping/allelic diversity in wheat (two in Crop Science and one in the Journal of Cereal Science).  
  dot January 30, 2008: Back to BACs!  MGEL's loblolly pine BAC library, generated through NSF DBI-0421717, approaches 7X coverage (ca. 1.5 million individually-archived clones) making it the largest single BAC library ever constructed!  Meanwhile, a 6X BAC library for bald cypress, a distant relative of pine, is completed through USDA 2006-34506-17290.  
  dot January 15, 2008: Mississippi State University undergraduate and MGEL employee, Benjamin Bartlett, completes construction of a 32X BAC library for reniform nematode (Rotylenchulus reniformis).  The library will be used in sequencing of the reniform nematode genome.  
  dot January 12, 2008: MGEL's Daniel Peterson organizes and hosts the Evolution of Genome Size workshop at Plant & Animal Genome XVI.  Speakers at the workshop are J. Spencer Johnston (Texas A&M), Vladimir Kapitonov (Genet. Inf. Res. Inst.), Cedric Feschotte (U. of Texas at Arlington), Jeffrey Demuth (U. of Texas at Arlington), and MGEL's own Surya Saha.  
  dot December 18, 2007: The paper "An automated, high-throughput sequence read classification pipeline for preliminary genome characterization" by MGEL's Philippe Chouvarine, Surya Saha, and Daniel Peterson is published in Analytical Biochemistry (see Publications).  
  dot November 6, 2007: MGEL's Daniel Peterson receives the 2007 Mississippi Agricultural & Forestry Extension Service (MAFES) "Grantsmanship Award."  
  dot November 2007: MGEL begins construction of a BAC library for the Australian salt-water crocodile (Crocodylus porosus).  
  dot October 1, 2007: MGEL welcomes visiting scientist Brian Avery of Westminster College (Salt Lake City, UT).  Dr. Avery conducts research on brine shrimp (Artemia spp.), the only animals that live in the hypersaline waters of Utah's Great Salt Lake.  
  dot August 2007: Former MGEL summer intern, LaShonda Robertson, begins graduate school at Mississippi State University.  Ms Robertson is conducting research on animal development in the lab of MGEL collaborator Dr. Erdogan Memili.  We at MGEL are very proud of LaShonda and are pleased that we will see her on a regular basis!  
  dot July 1, 2007: The book Genome Mapping and Molecular Breeding in Plants, Vol. 7, Forest Trees is now available.  MGEL's Daniel Peterson is co-author on the chapter titled "The Pines."  
  dot June 1, 2007: MGEL's Daniel Peterson is co-author on a Genome Research paper describing new techniques for analyzing the structure of human chromatin (see Dennis et al. 2007).  The paper's first author, Jonathan Dennis, is one of the many wonderful visiting scientists that MGEL has hosted.  
  dot May 16, 2007: Tougaloo College students Avis Simms, Erica McInnis, and Quiana Hunter start summer research internships at MGEL.  Their research is funded by the Mississippi Functional Genomics Network and National Science Foundation award DBI-0421717.  
  dot May 7, 2007: The first 730,752 clones of the NSF-funded loblolly pine BAC library are delivered to the Clemson University Genomics Institute (CUGI).  CUGI will distribute the BAC library and associated products.  
  dot May 6, 2007: MGEL welcomes Steve Raines, a visiting scientist from the University of Wisconsin!  
  dot April 1, 2007: MGEL receives a Mississippi Corn Promotion Board award to explore molecular basis of aflatoxin resistance in maize.  
  dot March 18-21, 2007: MGEL's Daniel Peterson participates in a Banbury Conference on conifer genomics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.  
  dot January 13, 2007: MGEL's Daniel Peterson organizes and emcee's the Plant & Animal Genome XV Reduced Representation Sequencing Workshop (RRSW).  Speakers are Claude dePamphilis (Penn State), Jonathan Dennis (Harvard), John Fellers (USDA/Kansas State), Jeffrey Dean (UGA), and Patrick Schnable (Iowa State).  
  dot November 30, 2006: Dipaloke Mukherjee will receive his master's degree on Dec. 8.  He is the first student to graduate from MGEL.  Congratulations, Deep, and best of luck in your future endeavors!  
  dot Nov. 27 - Dec. 29, 2006: MGEL welcomes visiting scientist Florence Tran of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)!  Ms. Tran is studying the genome of hybrid larch.  Her graduate advisors are Sylvie Laliberté (UQAM) and John MacKay (Université Laval).  
  dot October 11-25 2006: Dorman Hall, home of MGEL, is closed due to damage caused by Oct. 11 fire in the building's basement.  Suspected arsonist is arrested three days later.  Damage to MGEL storage area is considerable, but damage to fourth floor labs and offices is minor.  
  dot September 13, 2006: MGEL welcomes visiting scientist Dr. Siddarame Gowda of the University of Florida!  
  dot September 1, 2006: MGEL receives award from USDA-CSREES to study genome of bald cypress (Taxodium distichum)  
  dot August 18, 2006: A Science Technical Comment by John Bunge, Slava S. Epstein, and MGEL's Daniel G. Peterson suggests substantial error in a recent estimate of soil microbe diversity.  Click here to read more.  
  dot August 17, 2006: Peterson's Genomes & Genomics course reaches students at MS State satellite campuses via videoconferencing.  
  dot June 9, 2006: MGEL welcomes visiting scientist Dr. Margaret Young!  Dr. Young, an assistant professor at Elizabeth City State University, will be conducting pine genomics research at MGEL through a "Research Opportunity Award" supplement to MGEL's NSF award DBI-0421717.  
  dot June 9, 2006: MGEL welcomes undergraduate summer interns Erin Reynolds (Tougaloo College), Travis Faulcon (Elizabeth City State University - ECSU), and Kaleena Greene (ECSU)!  They will be working on isolating and sequencing important pine genes.  
  dot April 2006: MGEL and collaborator John E. Carlson (Penn State) release over 100 Mbp of pine genomic DNA sequence through the "Accelerating Pine Genomics" website.  
  dot March 10, 2006: MGEL's Daniel Peterson is principal investigator on "Community Sequencing Project" (CSP) proposal submitted to the DOE's Joint Genome Institute.  The CSP proposal includes thirteen other U.S. pine genome researchers as co-PIs.  
  dot February 14, 2006: MGEL's Supaphan Thummasuwan marries Randy Batten of Birmingham, AL.  Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Batten from all of us at MGEL!  
  dot February 8, 2006: Daniel Peterson gives seminar at University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) entitled "Battling Monster Genomes."  
  dot January 30, 2006: MGEL's pine sequencing research is focus of GenomeWeb News article.  Click here to read.  
  dot January 14-18 2006: Philippe Chouvarine and Daniel Peterson present research findings at Plant & Animal Genome XIV, San Diego, CA.  
  dot December 2005: MGEL/KS State study shows that Cot filtration produces > 14-fold gene enrichment in wheat; see new Genome article (Lamoureux et al. 2005) for details.  
  dot November 2-5, 2005: MGEL 2005 Summer Intern LaShonda Robertson presents her NSF-sponsored (DBI-0421717) research at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) in Atlanta, GA.  
  dot October 29, 2005: MGEL 2005 Summer Interns LaShonda Robertson and Annita Avery present the results of their summer research at Tougaloo College's Fall Student Research Forum.  
  dot October 28, 2005: MGEL welcomes new undergraduate student worker Jill S. Nelson.  
  dot October 17, 2005 - See our new webpages Mississippi Fauna and Mississippi Flora.  
  dot October 17, 2005: Daniel Peterson organizes the 4th "Reduced-Representation Sequencing Workshop" (RRSW) for Plant & Animal Genome XIV (January 14-18, 2006).  Scientists scheduled to speak at the RRSW are Claude dePamphilis (Penn State), Bob Ivarie (U. of GA), David Ray (WVU), and Daniel Peterson.  
  dot August 30, 2005: Lindy Jane Peterson is born to Lynn and Daniel Peterson.  
  dot August 28-30: Hurricane Katrina ravages the U.S. Gulf Coast.  As the hurricane moves inland it travels directly over Starkville, MS (home of MS State and MGEL).  Fortunately damage in Starkville is minimal.  The same cannot be said for the southern portions of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.  Our thoughts are with those (including friends and family) who have suffered significant losses due to this catastrophic storm.  
  dot June 25-29, 2005: MGEL's Surya Saha presents a poster entitled "Advantages of Network-Based Approaches for the phylogenetic analysis of intragenomic repeat regions" at the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology meeting (Detroit, MI).  
  dot June 23, 2005: Daniel G. Peterson gives a seminar entitled "Attack of the Pine Clones" at the Loblolly Pine Genome Project III meeting (Raleigh, North Carolina).  
  dot May 23, 2005: MGEL welcomes Tougaloo College summer interns LaShonda Robertson and Annita Avery (see Summer Interns)!  
  dot May 13, 2005: MGEL's Daniel G. Peterson and Wenxuan Liu provide the DNA used in sorghum genome sequencing (see below).  
  dot May 12, 2005: The Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (JGI) announces that it will sequence the genome of Sorghum bicolor in collaboration with "Community Sequencing Proposal" authors Andrew H. Paterson, John E. Bowers, Alan R. Gingle, C. Thomas Hash, Joachim Messing, Daniel Rokhsar, and MGEL's Daniel G. Peterson.  
  dot March 2005: See Volume 1, Issue 1 of Mississippi Landmarks, the first magazine devoted to MS State's Division of Agriculture, Forestry, and Veterinary Medicine (DAFVM).  Note the photograph of MGEL's Zenaida Magbanua and Daniel Peterson on page 17 (click here to view photo).   
  dot March 28: MGEL welcomes visitors/collaborators Matias Kirst and Allison Morse from the University of Florida.  
  dot March 1, 2005: The Handbook of Plant Genome Mapping: Genetic and Physical Mapping (John Wiley & Sons) containing Daniel G. Peterson's chapter "Reduced representation strategies and their application to plant genomes" is published in the U.S. and Europe.  
  dot January 15-19, 2005: Daniel G. Peterson co-organizes the Reduced-Representation Sequencing Workshop and gives a talk on gene-enrichment in wheat at the Plant & Animal Genome XIII meeting.  
  dot January 3, 2005: MGEL involved in characterizing the repetitive DNA of chicken (see Wicker et al. 2005).  
  dot November 11, 2004: Daniel G. Peterson (MGEL Director) is the recipient of the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station's 2004 Grantmanship Award.  
  dot November 1, 2004: MGEL welcomes new postdoctoral research associate Dr. Zenaida Magbanua.  Dr. Magbanua will lead the lab's NSF-funded effort to generate and characterize a 10X BAC library for loblolly pine (see Personnel).  
  dot September 23-24: Daniel Peterson attends NSF Plant Genome Program Awardees Meeting in Arlington, VA (click here to read the NSF Press Release about 2004 awardees)..  
  dot September 1, 2004: The repetitive DNA landscape of the chicken genome is subject of new Genome Research article.  
  dot August 2004: MGEL welcomes new database administrator, Philippe Chouvarine, and student workers, Daniel Bell and Kirby Nelson (see Personnel).  
  dot July 19-21, 2004: The 2004 meeting of the NSF Comparative Grass Genomics Virtual Center is hosted by MGEL and Mississippi State University.  
  dot July 15, 2004: MGEL's new NSF grant is topic of MAFES article (click here to read article).  
  dot June 29, 2004: MGEL officially awarded a $1.6 million, 3-year grant from the NSF Plant Genome Program (DBI-0421717) to construct and characterize a 10X BAC library for loblolly pine and explore the pine genome using CBCS and FISH (see Grants).  
  dot June 25-26, 2004: MGEL's pending NSF award is "hot topic" at the 2004 meeting of the Loblolly Pine Genome Project (Jekyll Island, Georgia).  
  dot Summer 2004: MGEL and Mississippi State University to host 2004 annual meeting/review of the NSF Comparative Grass Genomics Virtual Center.  
  dot April 2004: Angiosperm genome evolution topic of Current Opinion in Biotechnology article.  
  dot Feb. 7-21: Daniel Peterson participates in NSF Pan-American Studies Institute (PASI) on bioinformatics in Montevideo, Uruguay.  
  dot January 2004: Daniel Peterson is co-organizer of "Reduced Representation Sequencing: Methods and Applications" workshop at PAGXII.  
  dot January 2004: MGEL receives intramural grant to initiate CBCS research in loblolly pine (see Grants).  
  dot December 2003: Review paper on cereal genomes published in Current Opinion in Genetics and Development.  
  dot October 2003: Dr. Daniel Peterson gives invited seminar at the National Citrus Genomics Workshop.  
  dot September 9, 2003: Genome sequencing pioneers J. Craig Venter & Claire Fraser visit MS State.  
  dot September 2003: MGEL receives a grant to develop tools for marker-aided selection in pine (see Grants)  
  dot August 2003: MGEL welcomes new Ph.D. students Dipaloke Mukherjee, Fahmida Shireen, Supaphan Thummasuwan, and Surya Saha (see Personnel).  
  dot August 2003: MGEL thanks its wonderful summer interns, Breonica Carter and Anna-Gay Nelson (see 2003 Interns).  
  dot July 2003: Dr. Wenxuan Liu leads cytomolecular mapping efforts in sorghum.  
  dot 2002-2003: Cot-Based Cloning & Sequencing (CBCS), an invention of MGEL's Daniel Peterson & UGA's Andrew Paterson, makes national and international news (see MGEL in the News).