Nolan Kane

Nolan Kane /asmagazine/ en Greenhouses grow better students, biologists say /asmagazine/2016/02/17/greenhouses-grow-better-students-biologists-say <span>Greenhouses grow better students, biologists say</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2016-02-17T00:00:00-07:00" title="Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - 00:00">Wed, 02/17/2016 - 00:00</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/asmagazine/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/greenhouse.jpg?h=cc350fcd&itok=9pw2uoZY" width="1200" height="800" alt="The greenhouse on the roof of the Ramaley Biology building is partly obscured from view at ground level. Up on the roof, it enjoys the full benefit of those famous 300 days of 91�� sunshine annually. Photo by Laura Kriho."> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/30"> News </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/256" hreflang="en">Ecology and Evolutionary Biology</a> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/258" hreflang="en">Nolan Kane</a> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/260" hreflang="en">Stacey Smith</a> <a href="/asmagazine/taxonomy/term/262" hreflang="en">Tom Lemieux</a> </div> <a href="/asmagazine/laura-kriho">Laura Kriho</a> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="text-align-center"><a href="/p1b5359a957a/node/1248" rel="nofollow"><strong>Click here for printable PDF </strong></a></p><p>The wind howls, the snow blows horizontally, an arctic blast of ice crystals hits your face and your eyeballs are frozen. But if you are an ecology and evolutionary biology (EBIO) student at the 91��, you may be lucky enough to have a class that offers a refuge from this winter torment, one that transports you from a bitterly cold Colorado day to a warm desert climate or even to a tropical rainforest.</p><p>In this oasis on campus, you can make cutting-edge scientific advances, while surrounded by tropical plants in a tranquil setting, where the only sounds you hear are the soft whirring of fans, the rustling of leaves and the occasional gentle drips of water.</p><div class="image-caption image-caption-right"><p><a href="/p1b5359a957a/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/article-image/greenhouses.jpg?itok=R_n3HGmo" rel="nofollow"></a></p><p>EBIO Greenhouses</p></div><p>Welcome to the EBIO greenhouses. Faculty and students are fortunate to have these world-class resources on campus, allowing them to conduct research and teaching that would otherwise be impossible.</p><p>The EBIO plant-cultivation facilities comprise four greenhouses at three campus locations:</p><ul><li>Two ground-level, separate greenhouses near Macky Auditorium, used mainly for teaching.</li><li>A single-room facility on the rooftop of the Ramaley Biology building, used mainly for research.</li><li>The largest facility: a ground-level, compartmentalized greenhouse at 30th Street on East Campus used for both teaching and research.</li></ul><p>These greenhouses are home to a wide variety of florae that has been collected worldwide. According to Tom Lemieux, the CU-91�� greenhouse manager, all of the plants grown in the greenhouses are members of major ecosystems found across the globe, and many are not accessible in the wild due to geographic, language or political barriers.</p><p>“Undergraduate and graduate students learn firsthand knowledge about plant diversity, plant anatomy, morphology, evolutionary relationships, plant-animal interactions, pollination biology and other aspects of plant biology utilizing the collections maintained in the EBIO greenhouses,” Lemieux explains.</p><p>“For our students, this is a direct connection to the living, natural world – a connection too often lost or forgotten in today’s urban, electronic environment.”</p><div class="image-caption image-caption-left"><p><a href="/p1b5359a957a/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/article-image/lemieux.jpg?itok=-xoRRFqW" rel="nofollow"></a></p><p>Tom Lemieux, manager of the EBIO greenhouses.</p></div><p>Plant geneticist <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/ebio/nolan-kane" rel="nofollow">Nolan Kane</a>, an assistant professor in EBIO, uses the greenhouse to grow a diverse collection of plants, from sunflowers to chocolate. Kane says the greenhouses provide an opportunity for his students to gain direct experience in genetic sequencing and make unique contributions to plant science.</p><p>Students in Kane’s undergraduate <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/ebio/2015/06/15/innovative-courses-genomics-ebio-4460-5460" rel="nofollow">Genomics</a> class use plants grown in the greenhouse on the roof of Ramaley Biology. Over the course of a semester, students are each given a plant species and taught to sequence the choloroplast genome of the plant, which consists of 140,000 to 160,000 bases of DNA. The bases occur in pairs of guanine-cytosine and adenine-thymine.</p><p>“It’s a great way for them to learn cutting-edge approaches to genome assembly, sequencing and annotation, figuring out where the genes are in the genome and what they are doing,” says Kane.</p><p>Once the student finishes the genome and it has been verified, it is published in the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/GenomesGroup.cgi?opt=plastid&taxid=3398" rel="nofollow">chloroplast database</a> of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, making the new sequence freely available to scientists around the world.</p><div class="image-caption image-caption-right"><p><a href="/p1b5359a957a/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/article-image/tomato.jpg?itok=BTU_FjIf" rel="nofollow"></a></p><p>Nolan Kane examines a plant in the tomato family, primarily researched by Stacey Smith, in the Ramaley Biology building rooftop greenhouse. Photo by Laura Kriho.</p></div><p>“It’s really valuable for students to put on their CV that they have done something that no one has ever done before,” Kane observes. “They love being able to generate these new resources. They can say ‘I made this thing.’ It helps them build their skills and their record in a way that I haven’t seen in any other public institution.”</p><p><a href="http://www.colorado.edu/smithla