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+--- Thread: Article How a humble weed became a superstar of biology (/thread-19126.html)
How a humble weed became a superstar of biology - C C - Nov 5, 2025
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2025/how-humble-weed-became-superstar-plant-scienc
EXCERPTS: The seeds belonged to a spindly weed in the mustard family called Arabidopsis thaliana. Today, that weed is widely regarded as a botanical superstar. Arabidopsis has been the focus of some 100,000 research papers. Its seeds have flown around the Moon; it is the go-to plant for experiments on the International Space Station. And when the scientific community decided which plant should be the first to have its genome sequenced, Arabidopsis emerged as the winner. This year marks the 25th anniversary of when the world got its first glimpse at that genome, launching the much-studied plant toward even greater fame and scientific value.
Setting off from his homeland, Rédei could never have predicted all the ways that Arabidopsis would revolutionize understanding of plant biology, from root to shoot. Discoveries made in the little weed laid the groundwork for ways to improve crops and enhance food security, to manage ecosystems and mitigate climate change. The plant even yielded insights into animal evolution and human health. The Arabidopsis genome still serves as the first reference for researchers investigating genetic and development puzzles in other plants.
[...] “Think of Arabidopsis as the Hyundai of plants,” Fink told Mosaic, the NSF’s flagship magazine, in 1991. “If the Hyundai represents ‘car’ at its most fundamental, Arabidopsis is the essence, the stripped-down version, of [a] flowering plant. What we learn from it will most certainly be applicable to any plant of agricultural importance. It will tell us a considerable amount about how all green plants are structured and ultimately, perhaps, how their genomes may be modified to enhance productivity.”
[...] It is impossible to do justice to the discoveries made in the plant since — and to the contributions that each member of the dedicated Arabidopsis research community has made to science.
[...] The list goes on and on, with new findings about the plant continuing to roll out. But will it maintain its status as preeminent model of the plant world? Yes and no. For one thing, molecular biology techniques have become faster and cheaper: While sequencing the Arabidopsis genome took a decade and cost nearly $75 million, today a genome can be sequenced in a day for about $600. This makes it much easier to investigate any plant.
Still, it’s unlikely that any single plant will take Arabidopsis’s place. The community that grew around the little weed, with its commitment to sharing resources, data and lab protocols, can’t be underestimated, and it’s still going strong... (MORE - missing details)