Arabidopsis thaliana

What is it?

Arabidopsis thaliana.is a small flowering plant which is widely used by plant science researchers as a model organism to study plant developmental processes. It is a member of the Brassica family, like cabbage and radish. Unlike those species, however, it has no major agronomic importance. A. thaliana. does have several advantages for the researcher however. These include, among others, a small genome size (a haploid content of around 100 Mbp of DNA which is distributed among five chromosomes), a rapid life cycle (about 5 weeks from seed to seed), easy cultivation in restricted space, prolific seed production, and a large number of mutant stocks that are available for researchers from the stock centers at Ohio State University USA and Nottingham UK.



  • Return to Lab Manual

    James Madison University, Department of Biology
    Jonathan D. Monroe, PhD
    Comments to author: monroejd@jmu.edu

    All contents copyright (C) 1995, Jonathan D. Monroe. All rights reserved.
    Revised: December 22, 1995
    URL: http://csm.jmu.edu/biology/courses/bio455_555/atlab/thaliana.html