MRI: Acquisition of Controlled Environment Plant Growth Chambers For Research And Teaching In The Plant Sciences

国家科学基金会的资助将允许为位于阿什维尔的北卡罗来纳州大学购买四个受控环境植物生长室？s生物系。这些设备将提高教授和本科生在自然科学方面的教学和研究的质量和数量。使用这些会议室将完全纳入生物系？的本科科学课程，与学生第一次接触到我们的走廊级植物生物学类的商会。然后，将招募一批有才华的学生，特别是那些来自代表性不足的群体的学生，与三名主要研究人员一起参加本科生研究。通过控制光照强度，日照长度，温度和湿度等变量，学生和教师将能够研究植物之间的遗传差异如何解释生长，发育和繁殖的差异。生长室也将允许研究人员改变环境条件，以阐明植物？适应不断变化的全球气候最后，生长室将用于探索外来入侵植物物种的生物学。这些非本地植物对本地植物群落和高质量自然区域的健康构成特别威胁，了解它们与非生物环境因素相互作用的方式将有助于控制它们的传播。

National Science Foundation funding will allow the purchase of four controlled environment plant growth chambers for the University of North Carolina at Asheville?s Biology Department. This equipment will enhance the quality and quantity of both teaching and research for professors and undergraduate students in the natural sciences. Use of these chambers will be fully incorporated into the Biology Department?s undergraduate science curriculum, with students first exposed to the chambers in our sophomore-level plant biology class. Cohorts of talented students, particularly those from underrepresented groups, will then be recruited to participate in undergraduate research with the three principal investigators. By controlling variables such as light intensity, day length, temperature, and humidity, students and faculty will be able to investigate how genetic differences among plants explain differences in growth, development, and reproduction. Growth chambers will also allow researchers to change environmental conditions to elucidate plants? adaptations to a shifting global climate. Finally, the growth chambers will be used in exploring the biology of exotic-invasive plant species. These non-native plants pose particular threats to the health of native plant communities and high quality natural areas, and understanding the ways in which they interact with abiotic environmental factors will help control their spread.