Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Antirrhinum
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#PlantScienceClassics #2: Radiation-induced mutagenesis. 100 years ago, in 1921, Emmy Stein developed radiation-induced #mutagenesis of #Antirrhinum majus plants. But today it seems that her invaluable contribution is being ignored… Read on doi.org/10.1007/BF0195… 
Mutagenesis is now an invaluable tool to understand a gene’s function. In the early 1900s, when the hereditary substance was not even identified yet, it was an even more important tool, which Emmy Stein added to the small toolbox available to biologists at the time.
Stein used gamma rays from radium to irradiate both, adult plants & seeds, & showed the effects of different doses & different lengths, determining the lethal dose, &, importantly, the dose that induced weak mutants, that would still produce seeds to continue experimental work.
#PlantScienceClassics #1: The ABC model. 30 years ago, in 1991, plant science legends John Bowman, David Smyth and Elliott Meyerowitz published their groundbreaking paper on the ABC model in @Dev_journal: doi.org/10.1242/dev.11…
A regular Arabidopsis flower is composed of 4 whorls, each featuring specific organs: 4 sepals in the outer whorl, followed by 4 petals, then 6 stamen & 2 carpels in the inner whorl. These identities are controlled by the APETALA2 (AP2), PISTILLATA (PI) & AGAMOUS (AG) genes.
Mutant analysis of these genes showed that ap2 affects whorls 1 & 2 (Region A), pi affects whorls 2 & 3 (Region B), and ag affects whorls 3 & 4 (Region C). For their 1991 paper, the authors added the analysis of double and triple mutants of these three genes.
