unPAK undergraduates phenotyping Arabidopsis knockouts - Including the next generation of scientists

One of the grand challenges in modern biology is to understand the link between genotype and phenotype, and to learn how these connections vary by environment. To address this challenge, we built a network of faculty working with undergraduate students to grow a phenotypic library for Arabidopsis thaliana mutants. unPAK, undergraduates Phenotyping Arabidopsis Knockouts is a distributed project that engages the next generation of scientists. Built with one-on-one mentored research experiences and CURE (Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences), student and faculty teams from diverse backgrounds and institutions collaborate in answering this question, which has implications for ecology, conservation and agriculture.