Introduction to Arabidopsis Research

Today’s Goals

Describe the life-cycle of A. thaliana.Set-up a culture of Arabidopsis plants

and grow them to adulthoodExamine examples of how Arabidopsis

thaliana are used experimentally

Arabidopsis thaliana

Small flowering plant Popular as a plant model organism

Plant Bio and GeneticsIn the family of Brassicaceae

Mustard family

A. thaliana

Arabidopsis anatomy www.greenomes.org

Arabidopsis Development www.greenomes.org

As a model organism Most commonly used plant model

Like the fruit flies of the plant world Advantages:

Small size - Max 5cm in diameter, 30cm tall Easy to cultivate - grown in small area Small genome (5 chromosomes, 157 million base pairs,

27,000 genes) Rapid development - about 6 weeks to make mature seed Can self-pollinate Can perform crosses between different strains Many progeny Easy to perform genetic engineering

Can be transformed using Agrobacterium tumefaciens

Commonly Used to Study

Biotechnology ApplicationsLight sensingFlower development

Commonly used related plant

Brassica rapa Wisconsin Fast Plants Can use in classroom VERY easily Several mutant strains available Book on how to work with them

www.fastplants.org

Research Projects

You may choose this organism for your research project

You may choose C. elegansYou may talk with me and choose

something else

Resources TAIR

www.arabidopsis.org Free Mutant strains! Some have uncharacterized phenotypes in terms of

their growth & dev. PREP website

http://www.prep.biotech.vt.edu/expinfo/expinfo_anatomy.html

Suggestions for Experiments Books in my office Brassica rapa - related plant -called “Wisconsin

Fast Plants”

Example

I am interested in investigating salt tolerance in arabidopsis mutants.

My approach is to compare plants with different T-DNA insertions ability to tolerate various concentrations of salt solutions

My Literature search should . . . ?

Our Arabidopsis lab

Learn to cultivate Arabidopsis in both soil and on agar plates Choose 1 parameter to measure Record in lab notebook Prepare you for your independent projects

Each group of 3

Make 1 bottle of 100mls plant agar.Make it in a 200ml media bottleLabel it:

MS Agar Date Initials