on Centennial Campus
Researchers realized a long-awaited dream April 18 with the formal opening of the College of Agriculture and Life Science’s Fungal Genomics Laboratory in the Partners II Building on N.C. State’s Centennial Campus.
The lab’s mission is to discover and analyze the function of genes from economically important fungi. One of these is rice blast, a major disease threat to the world’s food supply, says Dr. Ralph Dean, FGL’s director (pictured above). “The lab integrates advances in biotechnology to investigate fungal biology,” Dean says. “Using our equipment and that of the NCSU Genome Research Laboratory, which is adjacent to our lab, we perform high-throughput DNA sequencing and many other functions.”
Dean hopes information from
his lab, in operation for more than a year, will provide insights into
fungi’s cellular and developmental processes, as well as lead to novel
plant protection and other fungal-based products.
