The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is offering a summer course on Frontiers and Techniques in Plant Science. This is a 3 week combined laboratory and lecture course for students ranging from advanced graduate student to faculty. Scientists come from universities, medical schools, research institutes and industry. Laboratory work includes projects using a wide variety of species, including model and agriculturally important plants such as maize, rice, Arabidopsis, tobacco and tomato, reflecting current research priorities in many US and international laboratories. The course allows students to take advantage of a wealth of technological resources applied to biological processes that are unique to plants. They will gain experience with recent advances in several systems, including genetic, genomic and comparative studies. The course is designed to fulfill a continuing demand within the academic community and industry for training in molecular and genetic approaches to plant science. The intention is (1) to 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) to introduce scientists familiar with microbial, animal or plant systems to cutting-edge research carried out by top plant biologists. The course consists of a rigorous lecture series, a hands-on laboratory and informal workshops on a variety of research tools. Speakers will provide both an overview of their specialty and an in-depth discussion of their work. These speakers will be experts in a variety of plant systems, and will bring a range of technical expertise to the course. The laboratory sessions provide an intensive training in modern techniques in plant biology and reinforce the lessons learned in lectures.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Course on Frontiers of Techniques in Plant Science July 1- 21, 2011 INSTRUCTORS: Stacey Harmer, University of California, Davis, CA Robert Last, Michigan State University, E. Lansing, MI Julin Maloof, University of California, Davis, CA ASSISTANTS: Yingshan (Polly) Hsu, University of California, Davis, CA Jeongwoon Kim, Michigan State University, E. Lansing, MI Olivia Wilkins, Boston, MA This course provided an intensive overview of topics in plant physiology, biochemistry and development, focusing on genomic, analytical, computational and other high throughput approaches to understanding plant biology. It emphasized recent results from model organisms including Arabidopsis, maize and tomato as well as a variety of other plants and provided an introduction to current methods used in basic and applied plant biology. It was designed for scientists with some experience in molecular techniques or in plant biology who wish to work with plants using the latest molecular, genomic, and computational technologies. The course consisted of a vigorous lecture series, a hands-on laboratory, and informal discussions. The instructors and a stellar group of invited speakers, acknowledged leaders in their fields, presented up-to-the-moment research on a wide range of topics in plant research. These seminars included plant evolution, morphology and anatomy; various topics in plant development (including development of meristems, gametophytes, and roots); light perception and photomorphogenesis; cell wall biosynthesis and biofuels, function and perception of hormones; small RNAs; biotic and abiotic interactions; and applications addressing current agronomic problems. Lectures describing bioinformatics tools available to the plant community and the resources provided by plant genome projects are also included. Speakers provided expert overviews of their fields, followed by in-depth discussions of their own work. The laboratory sessions provided exposure to cutting edge techniques currently used in plant research. These included studies of plant development and genome evolution, transient gene expression, applications of fluorescent proteins, automated phenotyping, analysis of polysomal mRNA, analysis of global gene expression data (microarray and short-read sequencing), construction of genetic networks, and metabolome analysis. Students were introduced to leading computational environments and programs including R, Bioconductor, and ImageJ. The course also included several short workshops on important themes in plant research. This course is supported with funds provided by the National Science Foundation
