From bench to bountiful harvests : a road map for the next decade of Arabidopsis research

In the face of an increasing world population and climate instability, the demands for food and fuel will continue to rise. Plant science will be crucial to help meet these exponentially increasing requirements for food and fuel supplies. Fundamental plant research will play a major role in providing key advances in our understanding of basic plant processes that can then flow into practical advances through knowledge sharing and collaborations. The model plant Arabidopsis thaliana has played a major role in our understanding of plant biology, and the Arabidopsis community has developed many tools and resources to continue building on this knowledge. Drawing from previous experience of internationally coordinated projects, The international Arabidopsis community, represented by the Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee (MASC), has drawn up a road map for the next decade of Arabidopsis research to inform scientists and decision makers on the future foci of Arabidopsis research within the wider plant science landscape. This article provides a summary of the MASC road map

Making open data work for plant scientists

Despite the clear demand for open data sharing, its implementation within plant science is still limited. This is, at least in part, because open data-sharing raises several unanswered questions and challenges to current research practices. In this commentary, some of the challenges encountered by plant researchers at the bench when generating, interpreting, and attempting to disseminate their data have been highlighted. The difficulties involved in sharing sequencing, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics data are reviewed. The benefits and drawbacks of three data-sharing venues currently available to plant scientists are identified and assessed: (i) journal publication; (ii) university repositories; and (iii) community and project-specific databases. It is concluded that community and project-specific databases are the most useful to researchers interested in effective data sharing, since these databases are explicitly created to meet the researchers’ needs, support extensive curation, and embody a heightened awareness of what it takes to make data reuseable by others. Such bottom-up and community-driven approaches need to be valued by the research community, supported by publishers, and provided with long-term sustainable support by funding bodies and government. At the same time, these databases need to be linked to generic databases where possible, in order to be discoverable to the majority of researchers and thus promote effective and efficient data sharing. As we look forward to a future that embraces open access to data and publications, it is essential that data policies, data curation, data integration, data infrastructure, and data funding are linked together so as to foster data access and research productivity

Meeting report: GARNet/OpenPlant CRISPR-Cas workshop

Targeted genome engineering has been described as a “game-changing technology” for fields as diverse as human genetics and plant biotechnology. One technique used for precise gene editing utilises the CRISPR-Cas system and is an effective method for genetic engineering in a wide variety of plants. However, many researchers remain unaware of both the technical challenges that emerge when using this technique or of its potential benefits. Therefore in September 2015, GARNet and OpenPlant organized a two-day workshop at the John Innes Centre that provided both background information and hands-on training for this important technology

The next generation of training for arabidopsis researchers: Bioinformatics and Quantitative Biology

It has been more than 50 years since Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) was first introduced as a model organism to understand basic processes in plant biology. A well-organized scientific community has used this small reference plant species to make numerous fundamental plant biology discoveries (Provart et al., 2016). Due to an extremely well-annotated genome and advances in high-throughput sequencing, our understanding of this organism and other plant species has become even more intricate and complex. Computational resources, including CyVerse,3 Araport,4 The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR),5 and BAR,6 have further facilitated novel findings with just the click of a mouse. As we move toward understanding biological systems, Arabidopsis researchers will need to use more quantitative and computational approaches to extract novel biological findings from these data. Here, we discuss guidelines, skill sets, and core competencies that should be considered when developing curricula or training undergraduate or graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty. A selected case study provides more specificity as to the concrete issues plant biologists face and how best to address such challenges

Taking the Next Step: Building an Arabidopsis Information Portal

The Arabidopsis Information Portal (AIP), a resource expected to provide access to all community data and combine outputs into a single user-friendly interface, has emerged from community discussions over the last 23 months. These discussions began during two closely linked workshops in early 2010 that established the International Arabidopsis Informatics Consortium (IAIC). The design of the AIP will provide core functionality while remaining flexible to encourage multiple contributors and constant innovation. An IAIC-hosted Design Workshop in December 2011 proposed a structure for the AIP to provide a framework for the minimal components of a functional community portal while retaining flexibility to rapidly extend the resource to other species. We now invite broader participation in the AIP development process so that the resource can be implemented in a timely manner.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the American Society of Plant Biologists and can be found at: http://www.plantcell.org/

Opportunities in plant synthetic biology

Synthetic biology is an emerging field uniting scientists from all disciplines with the aim of designing or re-designing biological processes. Initially, synthetic biology breakthroughs came from microbiology, chemistry, physics, computer science, materials science, mathematics, and engineering disciplines. A transition to multicellular systems is the next logical step for synthetic biologists and plants will provide an ideal platform for this new phase of research. This meeting report highlights some of the exciting plant synthetic biology projects, and tools and resources, presented and discussed at the 2013 GARNet workshop on plant synthetic biology

One hundred important questions facing plant science research

Plant biology is more important today than ever. Significant advances are required if we are to meet the escalating pressure for food, fuel, fibre and other plant products, and address the problems generated by climate change in a sustainable way, against a backdrop of an ever increasing and more prosperous human population. Scientific research has begun to focus its efforts towards these grand challenges, but it is not clear that the full range of challenges facing plant science is known or has been prioritised. What questions should the next generation of plant biologists address? Here we suggest, with brief explanations, our list of the most important questions facing plant science research today. We aim to stimulate discussion, encouraging plant scientists to think beyond the limits of their own specific sub-fields about the most important research that can conceivably be done, the most promising approaches that might successfully be applied, and the most significant discoveries that can possibly be made