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Why Arabidopsis?

Arabidopsis thaliana (variously known as thale cress, wall cress or mouse-ear cress) is a small, widespread member of the Brassicaceae family (which also includes mustard, cabbage and radish and canola). It is of no commercial importance whatsoever, but has been chosen by the scientific community as the model plant for laboratory experimentation, in the same way that the medical community studies lab mice as a model organism for human biology.

Experiments on Arabidopsis can be done more quickly, more cheaply and above all better than they can be done on crop plants such as wheat or canola, for many reasons:

  • Rapid life cycle (6 weeks) speeds up experiments
  • Easy cultivation in restricted space makes it cheap to grow many plants
  • Self-fertilisation and prolific seed production makes it ideal for genetics
  • High-resolution genetic and physical maps of the tiny genome are available, making it easy to find and clone genes
  • All three genomes (nuclear, plastid, mitochondrial) have been fully sequenced and annotated, making it the best-known plant genome, and arguably the best-known genome of any multicellular organism
  • Simple and efficient genetic transformation making gene transfer experiments easy
  • Huge publicly available collections of mutants, cloned genes, gene expression data tremendously accelerate research
  • A large, vibrant international research community all working on the same plant, sharing ideas and results, creates synergy
  • Importantly for us, energy biology in Arabidopsis is very similar to that in all other plants, making our results transferable to many other species

International research on Arabidopsis is coordinated by the Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee (MASC), of which Centre Director Ian Small is currently Chairman (co-chair is Xing Wang Deng from Yale University) and Barry Pogson (one of two Centre Chief Investigators based in Canberra) is the Australian representative. MASC organizes sub-committees on particular themes that advise on various aspects of future research, including data standards, sharing of resources, funding levels etc. MASC recommendations are publicized to the scientific community via a yearly report, The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR) and a yearly international conference. The 2007 conference will be in Beijing, China.