UNT will offer its freshman biology students an advanced research experience this fall as the only university in Texas to join the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science Education Alliance.
 
The new program is designed to involve college freshmen in complex scientific research usually reserved for upper-level and graduate students. Participating students will help isolate bacterial viruses called phage and analyze their genome as part of a new research laboratory offering. After the DNA is sequenced by an outside lab, students taking the second-semester course will use bioinformatics tools to analyze their phage’s genome — a portion or all of which may be previously unknown to science.