Partnership for Research and Education in Plants (PREP)

The Partnership for Research and Education in Plants (PREP) originates from the Fralin Biotechnology Center in the heart of the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute. This innovative program brings together high school biology teachers, their students, and research scientists to form a scientific learning community focused on sharing knowledge and research about molecular genetics, biotechnology, genomics and plant physiology.  PREP also provides teachers with the support and materials to conduct inquiry-based investigations focused on plant biology.

PREP is supported by a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) from the National Center for Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

As a dissemination center for PREP, the University of Missouri-Columbia will support the integration of student-led research into the secondary biology curriculum. Students will design and conduct research that utilizes genetically altered Arabidopsis seeds; as well as add their findings to a large bank of experimental data that scientists are collecting as part of the Plant Genome Research Program. Student data will provide insight into the function of the altered gene making student research not only important from the standpoint of a learning experience but also important in terms of research in plant gene function.

Benefits of PREP for teachers and students include:

o Enhancing instruction through the implementation of a student-led research program in plant science

o Assisting students with the design and implementation of creative and original experiments to discover the normal function of the missing genes

o Studying plants as a model organism to investigate a range of topics in biology including cell biology, plant anatomy and physiology, genetics, etc.

o Making a personal link to a faculty partners at the University of Missouri-Columbia to promote students learning and advance their own professional development