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What is Arabidopsis? · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today I will be talking about a plant
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  that many of you will not have heard
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  of, but is one of the most important plants in the world, and that is,
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  Arabidopsis, or to give its full name, Arabidopsis thaliana.
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  It's also known as stalecress.
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  It is normally, you will have seen it, it grows all around the world,
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  and it's a weed, and you'll find it growing on paths and in gardens and things like this.
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  So why is it one of the most important plants in the world.
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  Well, Arabidopsis is the model plant species.
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  There are a number of plant species that are termed model plant species,
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  like tomato and wheat and things like this, but sunflower, let's think of some
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  of the ones, lolium perenne, things like this, that's a grass.
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  But Arabidopsis is the one, and it's the one that all pure plant science is
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  conducted on. most of the experiments are done on Arabidopsis.
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  So if they're looking at the genes that control development,
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  it's done on Arabidopsis.
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  If you're looking at genetic engineering and gene expression, it's all Arabidopsis.
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  And why did plant science choose Arabidopsis? If it is not a crop species,
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  it's of no actual monetary value, why choose that species? Well,
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  there's a number of different reasons.
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  I believe it has a very modest genetic volume, the number of chromosomes,
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  the number of genes. It's not massive and it's not a polyploid like in wheat
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  and things like that where it's got multiple copies.
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  But the crucial thing is that it's got a very fast.
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  Life cycle. So you can get it to seed very quickly, which means you can pull
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  out traits really quickly and you can phenotype it very quickly.
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  So you might mutate it and then you can look for mutations and things like that.
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  So you can buy Arabidopsis seeds if you're a scientist, or you can just get
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  them donated from a fellow scientist and then propagate them.
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  And then they have all sorts of seed banks where they have the mutations in
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  all the different genes. So you can get Arabidopsis with a gene for rooting
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  turned off, or a gene for this or that.
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  So you can grow them, and then you can see how they respond to different treatments.
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  So it's a really useful sort of data bank of all these, or just bank,
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  seed bank of all these different genetics.
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  So the wild-type Arabidopsis, and then compare it to a mutant,
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  and see how it affected by growing with certain light conditions or all this. So very useful.
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  Arabidopsis is in the brassica family. and so we
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  call it the cabbage family so it's related to both ornamentals and
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  vegetable species to name but a few
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  cabbage broccoli cauliflower watercress turnips
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  radish horseradish cress honesty honesty has got the worst scientific name i'm
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  going to do one on good and bad scientific names as i see them honesty has got
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  a bad scientific name and i'll talk about that in a future episode stocks that's
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  a brassica wallflowers candy tuft.
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  So, so Arabidopsis, you know, knowing more about Arabidopsis will help,
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  um, the growth of those species as well.
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  So, and then also weeds, you know, if you control, if you could kill an Arabidopsis,
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  you can control weeds that are related to it.
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  So shepherd's purse and bittercress, they're weeds that are in the brassica family.
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  However, shepherd's purse I think is grown as a crop in China.
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  So a weed and a crop, other plants like that, they're both a weed and a crop. I think fat hen.
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  Fat hen is a big old robust weed in arable crops and also in allotments and
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  gardens, but I think it was brought over by the Romans to the UK and it was a bit like quinoa.
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  Or quinoa as I like to call it, and it was a non-cereal grain.
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  So that's interesting. I think it's related to buckwheat.
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  As I say, Arabidopsis is not the only model
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  plant species used by scientists because there's certain things
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  that a rabbit ellipsis doesn't do like it it
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  has a rosette of leaves just like a a cabbage plant
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  and so fruit and stem development it's
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  not great for that because it's fruits are tiny little green tiny
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  glob globules really so for
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  that and it's an annual as well so it's no good for studying genetics
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  of wood production for example so there
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  you would use something i think poplar is a populous is
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  a very is the model plant species for woody
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  crops and maize is
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  is a is a common model plant species lots
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  of scientists use maize tomato lots of scientists use
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  moneymaker and asa craig but they're very old varieties
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  now so probably not commercially relevant pea and
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  tobacco used to be used a lot as a model plant species it's
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  a strange one really when you think about you know health things
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  like that but yeah tobacco was and you just grow so fast and
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  you can get a lot of genes expressed in the leaves and it
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  smells lovely as well in your greenhouse tobacco I mean it doesn't smell like
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  smoke it does smell like you know a lovely in the evening it gives us loads
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  of volatiles so if you wanted to study volatile production chemicals in the
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  air then tobacco would be a great one for that yeah just look at my notes Californian
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  poplar populous tricarpa that's a common one for woody plants.
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  So Arabidopsis has grown in lots of controlled environment growth rooms in universities
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  up and down the country in the UK and in all around the world.
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  I think its distribution is pretty much global.
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  So the wild type one, there's specific types and,
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  The rabidopsis that grows in Norway will have a very different photoperiodic
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  response to the one that grows in Gibraltar or Cyprus, the south of Europe.
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  It will have much more of a long day plant and much more day neutral down in Gibraltar.
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  So it's not just one distinct genetic population. There is variety,
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  but scientists tend to swap seeds and keep the strains that they use,
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  the cultivars, the varieties.
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  And then as I say they can they can access all the different mutants and you can grow.
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  Arabidopsis hydroponically aeroponically and I'm not sure what the standard
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  standard gram media is a lot of people use perlite mixed with peat although
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  that's been phased out now,
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  and yeah so that is Arabidopsis it is
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  the model plant species you'll see it now now
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  you've heard of it from this podcast if you read any
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  scientific papers on google scholar then
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  you will you will see reference to a rabidopsis in
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  lots and lots of studies on plant science and you
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  might not have known what that meant before but it's this small little brassica
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  weed that scientists use it's honestly i
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  said it's quick life cycle it's also very small so you
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  can fit about 50 probably like
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  100 plants in a square meter or what i thought easily very easily
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  so as well as being fast turnaround that's the
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  model plant species it's also got loads of trichomes on its leaves so it's good
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  for trichome studies things like that quite juicy leaf as well so you can get
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  maybe we're looking for analyzed chemistry of the of the plants it's also good
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  for that you can get juice it up so that's been hydroponics daily for today
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  the completely useless but also completely,
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  valuable for scientists a rabidopsis if you thought this was useful to you then
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  please follow the podcast so you don't just get this episode you get everyone
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  every day on your podcast provider of choice thank you very much for listening
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  and see you again tomorrow.