ARIBIDOPSIS

It's a long way to go to claim myself as a plant biologist. I wasn't either fascinated by the intriguing beauty of plants as a kid nor inspired by my mom from her gardening habit. If I say either of these one, it would be a lie. As a biochemisty undergrad, most of courses encompassed examples from animal system, except two: Basic Plant Biochemistry and Plant Biotechnology . Ethical issues and hardship of getting human samples are predominant reasons to avoid that field. So, it left me to go through another direction. Plant science. Later I found it really cool, because you may grow plants the way you want, collect samples and there is no ethical issues and too much obstacles. But, I have encountered something special when I started working with Arabidopsis . You may work inside a lab. Grow then in chamber and do whatever required experiment to understand any sorts of mechanism. Here comes consequences. There is always few frequently asked questions regarding the plant I ...

Initially I thought I was right on the target. What's the target? To work on something which is plant specific. Living oragnisms share common processes such as generation of DNA and RNA, synthesis of protein, cell proliferation, signaling through molecules and so on. Plant hormones (auxin, ethylene, cytokinin, ABA, GA etc.) are specific to plants, not shared with other organisms. So, the study of phytohormone kept me thinking that I was dealing with something plant-specific. My thinking upto this mark is like scratching the surface rather than wondering the deep down philosophy. The next question was: What these phytohormones do? To cut the long story short; they are involved in developmental processes. The rudimentary developmental process is cell division. And, cell cycle and its components have similarity regardless of organisms. Now you see, I'm wrong! Looking at the bigger picture helped me to understand that what-so-ever our study is, it has universal implication. Model...