CSBR: Living Stocks - Diversifying the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center

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The Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center (ABRC) at The Ohio State University stores and distributes seeds, clones and other resources of Arabidopsis thaliana, a ubiquitous model system for plant research. For the past 25 years, the ABRC has propelled cutting-edge research and discovery in photosynthesis, agricultural improvement, green technology, and basic medical research. This award will support the ABRC's core mission to inexpensively distribute DNA and seed resources to the plant biology community, and to support plant science education by providing seeds and teaching resources free-of-charge to K-12 teachers. This project will diversify the resources held by the ABRC into bioenergy and crop plants, aligning the ABRC with the future needs of the plant biology community. Lastly, this project positions the ABRC to be a leader in local, national and international outreach and education, providing opportunities to inspire and train future generations of plant scientists. There are three specific goals of this project. The first is to continue to provide cutting-edge resources to the global Arabidopsis community at an accessible cost. This will be accomplished by increasing revenue through new services offered and by decreasing expenses through improved efficiency. The ABRC also aims to increase the number of users through a second goal, which is to expand the utility of the ABRC collection by diversifying beyond Arabidopsis. As data on other plants, including crops, are genome-enabled, they will require resource repositories. To that end, the infrastructure of the ABRC will be leveraged to support plant biology more broadly than in the past. The third goal is to lead local and global efforts to educate the public about plant biology. The ABRC will also engage a broader plant science community in outreach efforts, increase awareness of plants among the general public by creating interactive activities and provide a more user-friendly online source of information for non-specialists. These aims will function to maintain the ABRC's core mission, while strategically diversifying the organization to meet the future needs of scientists and educators worldwide. Consult the ABRC website for further information (abrc.osu.edu).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.