Jeff Bennetzen, a professor of genetics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has received $588,133 of an expected $898,783 award from the National Science Foundation for a three-year investigation into the nature of inaccurate repair of double-strand DNA breaks. Bennetzen will use four different grass species (maize, pearl millet, rice and sorghum) that contain engineered chromosome breakage constructs to better understand the environmental and genetic factors that affect the accuracy of DNA repair when both strands in the double helix are severed.
