College of Charleston Biology Program Featured on National Science Foundation Blog

The National Science Foundation, which already funds a number of research projects at the College, showed the College a little more love this past week through one of its blogs. A program operated by biology professors Matt Rutter, Courtney Murren, and Allen Strand was featured on the National Science Foundation’s Division of Integrative Organismal Systems blog.

Rutter and his colleagues work with scholars from other colleges and universities on a project called “unPAK: undergraduates Phenotyping Arabidopsis Knockouts: A distributed genomic approach to examining evolutionarily important traits.”

unPAK students in the College of Charleston’s School of Sciences and Mathematics Building.

Learn more about the College’s biology program.

The project involves undergraduate students and faculty who focus on recording the visible genetic traits, or phenotype, of a plant called Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis is a flowering plant that’s related to cabbage and mustard.

Through the unPAK project, students are able to gain invaluable experience, which could include anything from laboratory work to data collection and analysis.

Learn even more at unPak’s website.