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Abstract Plants are essential for life as we know it on Earth. They oxygenate the atmosphere, regulate the climate, and comprise much of the primary producers underpinning complex food systems. In the 1980s, a multinational group of plant scientists chose the small angiosperm—Arabidopsis thaliana—to serve as the model flowering plant for genetic and molecular studies that would be leveraged to produce vast new datasets, resources, and tools. The rationale they used to persuade funding agencies to make significant investments and focus intense effort on this single plant species was to produce a deep fundamental knowledge of the biology of plants and to apply this knowledge to valuable, but typically less tractable, plant species. Over the past 40 yr, Arabidopsis has emerged as the most powerful and versatile plant model to uncover core biological principles and served as a prototyping system to test advanced molecular and genetic concepts. We argue that the emerging challenges of accelerating climate instability and a rapidly growing global population call for renewed and robust investments in fundamental plant biology research. Leveraging the power of Arabidopsis research, resources, datasets, and global collaborative community is more important than ever. This commentary lays out a vigorous defense of foundational, i.e. “basic,” plant science research; describes that often, Arabidopsis is preferable to working directly in crops; highlights several transformative applications generated from basic plant research; and makes the argument that plant science is vital to the survival of humanity.
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Guns in rosettes: The Arabidopsis chemical weapons arsenal
Abstract Arabidopsis thaliana (hereafter Arabidopsis) is a small plant with a fast generation time and a well-annotated genome, which makes it ideal for research labs. It is arguably the most used model species in basic plant sciences. Over the past half century, studies in Arabidopsis have generated enormous insight into fundamental principles of plant life, ranging from mechanistic molecular biology to the complexities of interacting ecosystems. Based on research in Arabidopsis, we now understand that while basic cellular metabolism is generally conserved across species, variation in specialized metabolite enzymes gives rise to complex bouquets of chemical weapons that are tightly interwoven with the environment. Understanding how these are produced, regulated, and—especially—how they are deployed remains a key research area for plant immunity. The breadth of work in Arabidopsis provides a unique window into this complicated aspect of life as a plant. We are happy to have an opportunity to share our common interest in these aspects in this review. Due to space constraints, we focus on compounds produced by Arabidopsis with demonstrated antimicrobial properties. We hope that this focus (despite our eagerness to write more) will inspire new avenues of research that will contribute to a more complete understanding of immunity.
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- PAR ID:
- 10651092
- Publisher / Repository:
- Plant Physiology
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Plant Physiology
- Volume:
- 199
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0032-0889
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiaf411
