75 Integrating Membrane Transport with Male Gametophyte ... - TAIR

79 PREP: Partnership for Research and Education in Plants
Eric Brooks 1, 2 , Erin Dolan 3 , David Lally 3 , Carol Robertson 4, 5 , Frans Tax 1 , John Walker 4 , Margaret Wilch 1, 6
1
University of Arizona, 2 Buena High School, 3 Virginia Tech, 4 University of Missouri, 5 Fulton High School,
6
Tucson High Magnet School
Everyone can think of a time in their own science education when they conducted an “experiment” with a predictable outcome,
begging the question, “Why are we doing this” When such activities don’t yield the anticipated result, the focus of students’
scientific discussions becomes, “What went wrong” rather than, “How do these data address our scientific question” or, “What
alternative explanations could account for our findings” Although demonstrations, as well as lab activities with expected results,
are valuable teaching tools, students who have only these sorts of science learning experiences miss an opportunity to experience
the excitement of authentic investigation and understand the empirical nature of science. Through the Partnership for Research
& Education in Plants (PREP, www.prep.biotech.vt.edu; funded by a Science Education Partnership Award from the National
Institutes of Health National Center for Research Resources), students can ask and answer their own questions to yield unknown
and unanticipated results in the context of an ongoing effort to characterize gene function in Arabidopsis thaliana.
PREP brings together high school teachers and research scientists to guide high school students in designing and conducting
authentic investigations (i.e., experiments that have no known outcomes and that are of interest to the broader scientific community).
Scientists provide wild-type and mutant (T-DNA insertion line) seeds and experimental know-how to students, and students
design experiments to examine the effects of abiotic stressors (e.g., drought, salinity, soil pH, etc.) on wild-type vs. mutant plants,
thereby helping to determine the function of each altered gene. In addition, a select group of PREP teachers are serving as Fellows
(funded by the National Science Foundation’s 2010 Project). Through summer research experiences and ongoing academic-year
communication, the Fellows collaborate with PREP scientists and program personnel to integrate authentic investigation into
their science teaching, act as motivators and mentors for their colleagues, serve as advisors for the improvement and expansion
of PREP, and develop components of a genomics teaching and learning toolkit. PREP and the PREP Fellows program serve as
contexts for investigating the following hypotheses: (1) By engaging in authentic investigation, students can learn the process of
scientific inquiry, especially determining how data constitute evidence, generating alternative explanations, and making connections
between evidence and explanations, and (2) Partnerships between research scientists and K-12 science teachers have the potential
to integrate authentic investigation into classroom learning and enhance public understanding of science.
80 The genomic pattern of linkage disequilibrium in Arabidopsis thaliana
Tina Hu 1 , Sung Kim 1 , Vincent Plagnol 1 , Chris Toomajian 1 , Richard Clark 2 , Clare Lister 3 , Caroline Dean 3 , Joseph
Ecker 4 , Detlef Weigel 2 , Magnus Nordborg 1
1
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA,
2
Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tubingen, Germany, 3 Cell
and Developmental Biology, John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK, 4 Department of Plant Biology, The Salk Institute
for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, USA
We describe the pattern of linkage disequilibrium in 20 inbred accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana, using a dense
set of over 250,000 non-singleton single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) generated using Perlegen whole-genome
re-sequencing oligonucleotide tiling arrays. Linkage disequilibrium decays rapidly (within 10kb) in general, but varies
greatly across the genome and is strongly correlated with direct estimates of recombination. On a finer scale, we find
that linkage disequilibrium appears to be higher within rather than between genes, indicating that recombination may
be suppressed in genes. However, the decay of linkage disequilibrium is also slower for nonsynonymous as compared
to synonymous polymorphisms, demonstrating the effect of selection.