Arabidopsis thaliana is the 'lab rat' of plant biology! Why is this plant so important to the food we eat, and the science I do? Arabidopsis thaliana (ahh-RABID-opsis thahl-ee-AH-nah) is a small, weed-like plant native to Eurasia. You'll also hear me call it 'Arabi' for short, like a nickname. It's not the kind of plant you'd grow in your garden, or even in your yard, because it's very small and doesn't make very pretty flowers. However, I did once know a scientist who had Arabidopsis in her wedding bouquet!
Arabidopsis is incredibly important to the field of plant biology because we use it as a model to understand all plants. Model organisms are used to study animals and bacteria, too, because there are hundreds of thousands of different species, and we have limited resources. Plant biologists chose Arabidopsis for a wide variety of reasons. I'll discuss some of them in this article, but I encourage you to try to think of more.
Arabidopsis starts as a very tiny seed. How tiny? Well, on the US dime, there's a picture of Franklin Roosevelt. An Arabidopsis seed is about the size of his picture's eyeball! It's convenient for storage when seeds don't take up much space, and indeed, small size is a major reason that Arabidopsis is used as a model plant.
