Arabidopsis Thaliana

Arabidopsis thaliana is a small weed in the mustard family. It has been a convenient subject for studies in classical genetics for over forty years (35, 76). Recently, investigators have recognized that this flowering plant also has a genome size and genomic organization that recommend it for certain experiments in molecular genetics (41, 56, 57). As a result of the ease with which this plant lends itself to work in both classical and molecular genetics, Arabidopsis is coming to be widely used as a model organism in plant molecular genetics, development, physiology, and biochemistry.