Arabidopsis thaliana

Arabidopsis thaliana is the most used species in plant biology laboratories. The research covers a wide range of biological processes such as germination, flowering or response to different types of stress, from molecular to ecological level. The characteristics that have made it desirable are a rapid life cycle, production of numerous progeny, together with the fact that it requires little space and is easy to grow in greenhouses or growing chambers. The relatively small size of its genome has also influenced, completely sequenced in 2000 by the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative. Its genome contains a low proportion of repeated DNA sequences and can be engineered more easily and quickly than the genome of other plants.