How can a Plant Cell Atlas help us tackle global environmental challenges?

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource introduces students to plant science and the work of Dr Seung Yon (Sue) Rhee and Dr Selena Rice from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, USA. They are building a Plant Cell Atlas, which aims to help scientists answer important questions such as how do plants grow, respond to environmental cues, and reproduce at the molecular and cellular levels. This resource asks students to think about how answering these unknowns is essential to ensuring that we can address some of the biggest challenges that society faces, such as food and energy insecurity, climate change, and environmental degradation.
• This resource also contains interviews with Sue and Selena. If you or your students have a question for them, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. Sue and Selena will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the research, and tasks them to think about the different areas contributing to advances in plant science.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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