1. Introduction to Arabidopsis Research

2. Today’s Goals Describe the life-cycle of A. thaliana.
Set-up a culture of Arabidopsis plants and grow them to adulthood
Examine examples of how Arabidopsis thaliana are used experimentally

3. Arabidopsis thaliana Small flowering plant
Popular as a plant model organism
Plant Bio and Genetics
In the family of Brassicaceae
Mustard family

4. A. thaliana Arabidopsis anatomy Arabidopsis Development
Arabidopsis Development

5. As a model organism Most commonly used plant model Advantages:
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

6. Commonly Used to Study Biotechnology Applications Light sensing
Flower development

7. 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

8. Research Projects
You may choose this organism for your research project
You may choose C. elegans
You may talk with me and choose something else

9. Resources TAIR PREP website Books in my office
Free Mutant strains!
Some have uncharacterized phenotypes in terms of their growth & dev.
PREP website
Suggestions for Experiments
Books in my office
Brassica rapa - related plant -called “Wisconsin Fast Plants”

10. 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 ?

11. 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

12. Each group of 3 Make 1 bottle of 100mls plant agar.
Make it in a 200ml media bottle
Label it:
MS Agar
Date
Initials