Arabidopsis survey

Dear Colleagues,

The North American Arabidopsis Steering Committee (NAASC) is soliciting
input from the Arabidopsis community regarding the state of Arabidopsis
research and strategies for the future. It is critical that we, as a
community, be able to state strongly and clearly to the funding agencies how
work on Arabidopsis has benefited the general research community and how we
see these benefits continuing into the future.

Specifically, we are interested in gathering your input in response to the
following questions on the future of Arabidopsis research:

-- What community resources do you feel have been most useful for your
research and what types of resources do you feel need to be developed and
prioritized in the future?

-- What types of information should be gathered to constitute a satisfactory
determination of gene function as prescribed by the 2010 project?

-- What do you think should be the strategy to advance Arabidopsis research
beyond the stated objective of the 2010 project to understand the function
of all Arabidopsis genes?

In addition, we would appreciate your thoughts on contributions that
Arabidopsis research has already made in the following areas:

-- What seminal contributions has Arabidopsis research made to our
fundamental understanding of biology?

-- How has Arabidopsis research been translated into non-model systems?

Community input is also welcome on related issues concerning Arabidopsis
funding and its evolving role as a plant experimental model.

Please send your responses to "[Only registered users see links. ]" (by replying
to this message) by January 15, 2004; please do not post your responses to
the Arabidopsis newsgroup. NAASC will gather and synthesize the comments in
a report that will be posted on TAIR and available to the entire community.
No comments will be directly quoted, unless your permission is given.
Regardless, we would like to include a list of all respondents at the end of
the report. We anticipate that the report will serve as a planning document
and a forum for constructive communication with the funding agencies.

Thanks for your input,
NAASC

Bonnie Bartel
Philip Benfey
Greg Copenhaver
C. Robertson McClung
Eric Richards
Brenda Winkel

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