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#PlantScienceClassics #4: Arabidopsis thaliana suggested as model plant. In 1943 botanist Friedrich Laibach suggested A. thaliana as model organism for plant science. But the community was not ready yet - it took them another 40 years to see the light… doi.org/10.7287/peerj.… 
Laibach started work on A. thaliana in 1907, when, for his PhD-thesis, he determined the number of chromosomes in different plants he collected around his hometown Limburg, or @UniBonn, where he worked. A. thaliana only had 5 chromosomes, one of the fewest he found.
In his 1943 paper, Laibach points out the benefits of working with A. thaliana, such as easy to grow, small genome, short lifecycle, high seed yield, can be crossed & mutated…), pointing out how comparable it is to the ‘prime example’ of models: #Drosophila melanogaster.
