This option is available within the Botany major at the following location:

• Corvallis

The option in Molecular, Cellular, and Genomic Botany (MCG) is designed for Botany undergraduates with career interests in molecular, cellular and genomic biology, by providing a curriculum that provides them with specialized knowledge and skills for work and graduate school.

Option Code: 935

Upon successful completion of the program, students will meet the following learning outcomes:

• Communicate scientific concepts, experimental results and analytical arguments clearly and concisely verbally and in writing.
• Apply scientific methods, reasoning and appropriate mathematics to describe, explain and understand biological systems.
• Demonstrate understanding of five core concepts in biology: evolution; pathways and transformations of energy and matter; information flow, exchange, and storage; structure and function; and biological systems.
• Use interdisciplinary approaches (applying chemistry and quantitative skills) to work on biological problems.
• Describe the complex networks of interactions that determine energy flow and the cycling of water, carbon, nitrogen, and minerals within ecosystems.
• Identify and analyze the anatomical and morphological features of plants and plant structures as they enable plant function and reveal plant evolutionary histories. 
• Recognize and describe the features of vascular plant groups using standard botanical terminology. Interpret the evolutionary and phylogenetic relationships of plants by evaluating analytical and experimental tools used to understand organismal diversity. 
• Incorporate information from physiology, genetics, developmental biology, biochemistry and genomics to explain how plants integrate water-relations, mineral and organic nutrition, solute transport, respiration and photosynthesis, hormonal and environmental signals to regulate the processes of growth and reproduction.
• Describe and implement laboratory methods typically used in plant biology.

In addition to the general Botany curriculum, the MCG option requires 6 credits of advanced background courses in biochemistry and biocomputing; a choice of two advanced BOT courses in plant genomics and biochemistry; and a choice of 3 courses drawn from a menu of advanced BOT, BI, BB or MB courses in cell biology, molecular biology and genomics.

To encourage students in the option to learn actively and obtain practical skills, up to 3 credits of approved Experiential Learning can be applied to the option. Other courses may be substituted for list C with approval of a BOT advisor. The required course, BDS 310, can also be used to fulfill the major requirement for "additional quantitative skills." The core course requirements of the BOT major are not changed by doing the option, and no additional credits are required to complete it.

Option Code: 935