The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is giving a summer course on Advanced 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 Arabidopsis thaliana as a model plant, as well as a number of other species, including maize and tomato, reflecting current research interests in many US and international laboratories. The course allows students to take advantage of a wealth of genomic resources and to focus on one system as they learn the more general biological or technical principals being taught. At the same time, they will be exposed to recent advances in several systems, including genetic, genomic and comparative studies. The course is designed to fulfill a continuing demand within the plant science community for training in these areas. The intention is (1) to teach state of the art molecular techniques to scientists already involved in plant research so that they can apply these technologies to their own future research and (2) to teach scientists familiar with microbial, animal or plant systems about current research in plant biology. The course consists of a rigorous lecture series, a hands-on laboratory and informal discussions. Speakers will provide both an overview of their specialty and an in-depth discussion of their work. Many of these speakers will be experts in plant systems other than Arabidopsis; others will be non-plant scientists who are expert in disciplines that apply to all biological systems. The laboratory sessions provide an intensive training in modern techniques in plant biology and reinforce the lessons learned in lectures.
