Why Arabidopsis Why

-
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 use. Does it produce any grain? Does it provide fruits? Does it has ornamental value? and so on. To make the long story short, it is a weed! 

Fellow researchers think Arabidopsis as a toy which has no economic value. Sometimes they make fun out of me about Arabidopsis. The worst case happened when they provide a new name for me. ARIBIDOPSIS (Arif + Arabidopsis)! 


Here comes superficial logic behind Arabidopsis. Think about E. coli for a second. It's a simple bacteria like any other ordinary one. Scientists started to treat it as model and knowledge gained through the study of it has been applied for decades. Same thing is true for single celled yeast, mice, C. elegans,drosophila too.

The following features have made Arabidopsis as a model plant. 
  • Life cycle, more precisely from seed to seed, it takes 2-3 months.
  • Through each life cycle, it provides thousands of seeds. 
  • Easy to grow and require less space.
  • Genome is relatively small, although contains necessary processes require for plant development. 



Honestly speaking, these bullet points are available in every text book. The aim of this "Why Arabidopsis Why" series is to bring some ground breaking examples where knowledge gained from Arabidopsis are applied or simulated on other plants and even beyon plant sciences.   


You will find all published posts from this series from following links:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts

Plant Biology Highlights: Nature Articles 2018

-
Image
We are almost at the end of another year. Undoubtedly, we came across amazing research and review articles in this year. As plant biologists, we are more focused on plant-specific journals. Along with those plant-specific journals, plant-related stories are making their place into other journals too. Like previous years, this year also, I'm covering plant biology stories published in Cell, Science, and Nature all the year round. In this post, you'll find published papers from Nature.   MicroRNAs from the parasitic plant  Cuscuta campestris  target host messenger RNAs   Dodders ( Cuscuta  spp.) are obligate parasitic plants that obtain water and nutrients from the stems of host plants via specialized feeding structures called haustoria. Dodder haustoria facilitate bidirectional movement of viruses, proteins and mRNAs between host and parasite, but the functional effects of these movements are not known. Here, they showed that  Cuscuta campestris  haustoria ac
Read more

Ethylene: Accidental Hormone or Pheromone

-
Image
It is always fascinating how a small hydrocarbon or 2 carbon containing alkene has huge impact on plants. Yes, you gussed it right. It's Ethylene. First gaseous compound discovered as hormone. It has specific roles in fruit ripening, cell elongation, senescence, seed germination, leaf abscission, defense response and so on.   According to the definition of hormone, it should have two characteristics. Biosynthesized in a small amount by multi cellular organism and work on a distant place from the synthesis site. This classical definition for hormone was provided by Ernest Starling at 1905. Ethylene fulfills both requirement as a hormone. In addition, it can diffues and affect surrounding plants. We may consider it as pheromone in that case.   The initial discovery of ethylene is nothing but accidental observation like penicillin. In 1858, George Fahnestock observed that leaking illuminating gas are causing damage to the plants at greenhouse. During that time illuminati
Read more

Mutant Series: OPEN ALL NIGHT LONG (OPAL)

-
Image
OPEN ALL NIGHT LONG. It sounds like a coffee shop or bar or club or karaoke, something like that. Interesting enough, it's a name of one Arabidopsis thaliana mutant.  Plants have an economic life as like as most other biological systems. It makes its own food using water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide. The process knows as photosynthesis. At the day time, it opens its gate/stomata. In the daytime, light is available and perfect time for cooking/photosynthesis for them. In the night, they just close the door/stomata to prevent water loss through transpiration. So, for plants, the following things happen generally in the case of stomata opening and closure.  Nighttime stomatal control is important from both evolutionary and ecological perspective.  But, the mechanism is not clear whether this dark response is simply a passive consequence of the absence of light stimulus, or an active process recruiting other mechanisms of stomatal closure or involving independent signal
Read more

Black Panther: Plant Biologist's Review

-
Image
This weekend I went to the theater with friends to watch "Black Panther". Most of the times, I fall in sleep in the halfway of the movie. Fortunately, I didn't at this time. Apart from that, this movie implanted few questions in the viewer's mind. One issue is definitely about the "heart-shaped herb".  Mythology and Technology of Wakanda The story of the movie went way back to the history of Wakanda and the futuristic technological advancement of the tribe. There is a subtle link between their past and future. Their groundbreaking future technologies are based on Vibranium. In the past, the place was crashed by a huge meteorite containing Vibranium. It caused massive radiation, stayed in their environment till today and undoubtedly changed the ecology of Wakanda. It shaped the plant life in that region. The radiation-caused mutation gave rise to a diverse plant kingdom, which is rare in the other part of the world. The heart-shaped herb was o
Read more

Plant Biology Highlights: Nature Articles 2019

-
Image
I am doing this plant biology CNS (Cell - Nature - Science) paper highlights since 2016. Every winter break, it is a fun job for me to do. I enjoy as much as writing a New Year card to my favorite person. It is also a reminder for myself that lots of great science are going on and I have to do better next year and keep trying to make a difference. Here, I have previewed plant biology stories published this year in Nature.  Mobile PEAR transcription factors integrate positional cues to prime cambial growth   Apical growth in plants initiates upon seed germination, whereas radial growth is primed only during early ontogenesis in procambium cells and activated later by the vascular cambium. Although it is not known how radial growth is organized and regulated in plants, this system resembles the developmental competence observed in some animal systems, in which pre-existing patterns of developmental potential are established early on. Here they show that in Arabidopsi
Read more