Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Course: Frontiers & Techniques in Plant Science

智力上的功绩。三十年来，冷泉港实验室植物科学前沿和技术暑期课程在向广泛的植物科学界传播新方法和技术方面发挥了关键作用。这门课程延续了这一传统，侧重于新的基因组学、分析、计算和其他高通量和跨学科的方法来理解植物生物学。其目的是(1)向已经参与植物研究的科学家传授最先进的技术，以便他们能够将这些技术应用于自己未来的研究，以及(2)向熟悉微生物、动物或植物系统的科学家介绍由顶尖植物生物学家进行的尖端研究。这门课程的目标是让学生沉浸在植物生物学的几个关键主题中--进化；形式和功能；遗传机制；与生物和非生物环境的相互作用；以及用于食品、药品和燃料的工程植物--采用的形式包括精力充沛的系列讲座、动手实验室和非正式讨论。该课程强调了来自广泛研究的植物，如拟南芥、玉米和番茄的最新结果，以及具有重大经济重要性或科学新颖性的新兴模式系统。课程和实验相结合的形式为学生提供了一个理论和实践的介绍，介绍了当前在基础和应用植物生物学中使用的方法。讲师和一群著名的特邀演讲者，在他们的领域中公认为领导者，在植物研究的广泛主题上提出最新的研究。这些学生是多样化的，从早期的研究生到终身教职的教授，他们的背景包括哺乳动物生物学、工程学和物理学。这种非正式、高度互动的课程形式允许学生相互学习，也可以向受邀的演讲者学习。总而言之，这门课程提供了一个为期三周的密集的植物生物学跨学科和前沿方法的沉浸，帮助培养下一代植物生物学家在生物、计算和物理科学的界面上工作。这门课程的更广泛的影响是培训研究人员使用可用于植物生物学研究的最新计算和实验资源和工具。选择的学生包括那些将最广泛地传播在本课程中获得的信息的人。许多学生可能在不久的将来承担教育和监督责任；其他人已经是教授或博士后研究员，他们将立即传授他们在课程中学到的知识。许多参加这门课程的学生继续领导自己的实验室，这门课程为这些新的实验室负责人提供了知识基础和重要的科学联系网络。事实上，目前的课程讲师中有两位是课程校友。近年来，男女学生比例均等，几名拉美裔学生参加了这门课程。为了进一步推动这一趋势，该课程被广泛宣传，并专门联系促进招募和留住未被充分代表的群体进入生命科学专业的机构计划(例如，NSF支持的AGEP计划和生命科学REU站点)。这些学生来自不同的背景，在课程期间接触到广泛的板凳和计算方法，增加了他们继续开展跨学科研究的机会，这对应对当今的全球挑战至关重要。

Intellectual Merit. For thirty years, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory summer course on Frontiers and Techniques in Plant Science has played a critical role in disseminating new approaches and techniques to a wide plant science community. The course is continuing this tradition with a focus on new genomic, analytical, computational and other high throughput and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding plant biology. The intention is to (1) teach state-of-the-art techniques to scientists already involved in plant research so that they can apply these technologies to their own future research and (2) introduce scientists familiar with microbial, animal or plant systems to cutting-edge research carried out by top plant biologists. The goal of the course is to immerse students in a handful of key topics in plant biology--evolution; form and function; genetic mechanisms; interactions with the biotic and abiotic environment; and engineering plants for food, pharmaceuticals, and fuel--employing a format that includes a vigorous lecture series, a hands-on laboratory, and informal discussions. The curriculum emphasizes recent results both from widely studied plants, such as Arabidopsis, maize and tomato, and emerging model systems that have significant economic importance or scientific novelty. The combined lecture plus lab format provides the students with a theoretical and practical introduction to current methods used in basic and applied plant biology. The instructors and a stellar group of invited speakers, acknowledged leaders in their fields, present up-to-the-moment research on a wide range of topics in plant research. The students are diverse, ranging from early-stage graduate students to tenure-track professors, with backgrounds in areas including mammalian biology, engineering, and physics. The informal, highly interactive course format allows students to learn from each other as well as from the invited speakers. In sum, the course provides an intensive three-week immersion into cross-disciplinary and cutting-edge approaches in plant biology, helping prepare the next generation of plant biologists to work at the interface of biological, computational and physical sciences.Broader Impacts. The broader impact of the course is the training of researchers in the most up-to-date computational and experimental resources and tools available for plant biology research. Students are chosen to include those who will most broadly disseminate information acquired in the course. Many of the students are likely to have educational and supervisory responsibilities in the near future; others are already professors or post-doctoral fellows who will immediately pass on what they have learned in the course. Many of the students who take the course go on to lead their own laboratories, with the course providing a foundation of knowledge and an important network of scientific contacts for these new lab heads. In fact, two of the current course instructors are course alumni. In recent years, female and male students were equally represented and several Hispanic students took part in the course. To further this trend, the course is advertised widely and specifically contacts institutional programs that facilitate recruiting and retention of underrepresented groups into the life sciences professoriate (e.g. NSF-supported AGEP programs and life sciences REU sites). The students come from a variety of backgrounds and are exposed to a wide range of bench and computational approaches during the course, increasing the chances that they will go on to carry out the interdisciplinary research that is vital for meeting today's global challenges.