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Oregon State University scientists seek crowdfunding to map beaver DNA

oregonstate.edu
OSU sports mascot Benny the Beaver

Oregon State University scientists figured out how to hitch a research project to the Beaver athletics star and hope the association will mean big bucks for their proposed endeavor.

They are angling to raise $30,000 to pay for mapping the DNA of the orange-blooded college mascot Benny the Beaver (but, seriously, using the blood of a real North American beaver for the job).

Through the OSU Foundation, the scientists launched ahttps://youtu.be/aGLLUUDXfmA","_id":"00000171-95d7-d2cb-a5f3-9fff4e950000","_type":"035d81d3-5be2-3ed2-bc8a-6da208e0d9e2"}">https://youtu.be/aGLLUUDXfmA" id="54bcins1ae:u54bcins1c3" style="color: rgb(0, 131, 202);">crowdfundinghttps://youtu.be/aGLLUUDXfmA","_id":"00000171-95d7-d2cb-a5f3-9fff4e950000","_type":"035d81d3-5be2-3ed2-bc8a-6da208e0d9e2"}">https://youtu.be/aGLLUUDXfmA" id="54bcins1ae:u54bcins1c3" style="color: rgb(0, 131, 202);"> campaign with a deadline of Oct. 30.

The scientists figured that “because the beaver is the state animal, and it’s really an iconic symbol of Northwest forest and wetlands, there might be a lot of excitement,” said Stephen Ramsey, assistant professor of biomedical sciences at OSU.

Scientists increasingly are turning to crowdfunding campaigns after attempts to win federal grants were frustrated — especially for work on oddball organisms outside the mainstream of biomedical research.

The OSU scientists figured that crowdfunding was a way to learn more about the beaver, an exquisite builder, while making a contribution to basic science.

OSU is not the first to link a mascot to biological research.

Mascot DNA sequencing was under way at Virginia Tech before crowdfunding became common in 2009. Researchers there tapped the U.S. Department of Agriculture for funds to map the genome of the domestic turkey, which is kissing cousin to the Virginia Tech HokieBird.

The University of California, Santa Cruz overran its crowdfunding goal of $20,000 last year to do the genetics work on the university mascot, the banana slug. And the University of Maryland raised $12,000 to map its mascot, the diamondback terrapin.

Penn State University’s Nittany Lion is extinct, so the school had to extract so-called ancient DNA from a 150-year-old stuffed specimen displayed in the All Sports Museum to complete its $12,000 project, which was successfully crowdsourced.

OSU’s blood sample came from a 4-year-old beaver named Filbert, who resides in the Oregon Zoo in Portland.

And if you’re wondering about the University of Oregon’s mighty Duck, it’s too late, Ramsey said.

In 2013, the China Agricultural University, BGI, and Scotland’s University of Edinburgh published an article in Nature Genetics about their completed duck genome.

“The UO kind of missed the boat on that one,” Ramsey said.

OSU is pitching its Benny the Beaver project with a video showing the mascot touring campus and talking with scientists about genetics — and then going to the College of Veterinary Medicine for a blood draw, which resulted in a tube filled with OSU orange “blood.”

“That was a little bit of artistic license,” Ramsey said. “I was the one who held the vial (of blood) and brought it back from the zoo, and I can confirm it was red — but don’t tell athletics,” he said.

 

The Beaver Genome Project is actually serious science that can advance the work of researchers in at least the fields of agriculture, forestry, bioinformatics and veterinary medicine.

Creating a reference genome for the beaver would allow scientists to establish evolutionary relationships and pinpoint where the animal sits on the tree of life.

The genome would allow scientists to understand the population dynamics of the 10 million to 15 million North American beavers that live on the continent.

The work would help scientists understand the beaver’s role as ecosystem engineer with a key role in maintaining complexity in the wetland’s habitat, according to the researchers.

“They remake their environment the way they want it,” he said. “If they don’t have a pond somewhere, they’ll just make one. Beavers are the species that most affects and controls their environment — next to humans.”

The OSU researchers plan to share the beaver’s reference genome with scientists globally via GenBank, the National Institute of Health’s genetic sequence repository.

The project also would allow OSU to showcase its Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing, which in July announced the purchase of a shiny new Illumina HiSeq 3000 high-throughput DNA sequencer, which works at triple the speed of the previous model and is less costly to operate.

The machine puts OSU a generation ahead of its civil war rival, which uses the HiSeq 2500.

The mascot DNA sequencing projects generally provide students with an opportunity to learn how to extract DNA, purify the samples, prepare DNA libraries, and annotate the results by a process of identifying and classifying the genetic material.

“You take this massive pile of DNA and turn it into a scientifically useful, annotated reference genome.” Ramsey said.

The students also can observe the frustration of relying on federal grants for scientific work; researchers write many more grant proposals than are ever funded. Crowdfunding has become an attractive alternative to many.

OSU forestry professor Steve Strauss made a foray into crowdfunding on Experiment.com this year and raised $6,100 to analyze the DNA of an orphan stand of white-barked aspen near Corvallis.

Many scientists of the future won’t have any choice but to use crowdfunding, Ramsey said. They will have to get the technique down in order to sustain their science, he said.

For example, the banana slug is not the sort of organism that funding agencies love, Santa Cruz researcher Kevin Karplus wrote on his blog.

“It isn’t a pathogen, it isn’t a crop, it isn’t an agricultural pest, and it isn’t a popular model organism for studying basic biology,” he wrote.

The oddball animals, on the other hand, all have extra­ordinary biological traits, and some of them may provide a useful cross-species insight that could ultimately help humans.

The banana slug, for example, can move only forward. It’s genital opening is on the side of its head and sometimes it gnaws off its penis to separate after sex, according to Karplus.

The sex of the Maryland terrapin is determined by the temperature when its eggs are incubated. The turtle rids its body of excess salt through its tear ducts.

The beaver “can eat and digest wood, and they have incisors that allow them to cut through a 3-foot-wide tree in a matter of hours,” Ramsey said.

Their prominent teeth are orange, contrary to Benny’s sparkling grin, probably because of the iron in their diet, Ramsey said. Before chomping down lily pads, they roll the leaves like cigars.

The details may be fascinating but not fascinating enough at this point to shake loose research dollars to study the oddball animals.

Ramsey said he’s certain that science eventually would get around to mapping the beaver genome, “but it’s hard to say when, though.”

So, the OSU scientists asked the athletics department for the use of Benny the Beaver to draw attention to the genome project. And Ramsey said he hopes it’s just the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

“(Athletics) reach a really broad group of people through their online presence and through football games,” he said. “We definitely would like to work with athletics on that.”

By Friday evening, the campaign had raised $3,590 from 40 donors — with 35 days to go.

The scientists are coaxing donors with pledge awards, such as a signed Benny photo for $100, a genomics lab tour and private reception for $500 and the right to name one of the unidentified genes the project reveals for $1,000.

Starting with the fruit fly, there’s a tradition of assigning wacky names to genes as they’re mapped. “It’s just the culture,” Ramsey said.

“It is a problem for (doctors), though. If it turns out one of these genes is medically important, and they have to tell a patient — you have a mutation in your Sonic Hedgehog gene — it’s a little difficult.”

Copyright 2015 Eugene Register Guard