What is the scientific name of a "humble weed"?

why call it as such?

What is the scientific name of a "humble weed"?
Arabidopsis thaliana, a small weed in the mustard family, has become the plant model equivalent to the mouse model in genomic research. It offers clues to how all sorts of living organisms behave genetically, with potentially widespread applications for agriculture, medicine, energy, and the environment.





The simplicity of this humble weed is truly a virtue. The 120-megabase genome of the plant is organized into five chromosomes and contains an estimated 25,000 genes. AGI's international team began sequencing the Arabidopsis genome in 1996. The sequence of chromosomes 2 and 4 was reported in 1999, and today chromosomes 1, 3, and 5 wereannounced as complete.


Arabidopsis thaliana





The complete sequence of Arabidopsis is directly relevant to human biological functions, because many fundamental life processes at the molecular and cellular levels are common to all higher organisms. Some of those processes are easier to study in Arabidopsis than in human or animal models. Arabidopsis contains numerous genes equivalent to those that prompt disease in humans鈥攔anging from cancer and premature aging, to ailments such as Wilson's disease, in which the human body's inability to excrete copper can be fatal.





"The Arabidopsis genome is entirely in the public domain, so the research results being announced today are immediately available to scientists across the world," said Daphne Preuss, an AGI researcher and faculty member in the University of Chicago's Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology. "Its implications for farming, nutrition, and medicine are potentially vast."





The entire genome of Arabidopsis consists of genes that dictate when the plant will bud, bloom, sleep, or seed. Those functional genes have their counterparts in far more complicated plants such as corn, rice, cotton and soybean. Because it is a model for over 250,000 other plant species, Arabidopsis is yielding insights that scientists are already applying to make other plants easier to grow under adverse conditions and healthier to eat.





One result of the research has been crops that are more resistant to the cold. Because every molecular function of plants is dictated by DNA, an understanding of the genome could also help scientists develop crops that grow faster and larger, are more disease-resistant, and produce useful chemicals more efficiently.





Arabidopsis researchers have also identified genes that determine whether the growing shoot of a plant will develop into a flower. By inserting a certain gene into poplar shoots, scientists have shortened that tree's flowering time from six years to only six months. This could have implications for the use of plants as a major potential source of renewable energy and as feedstock in place of petroleum in the chemical synthesis industry.





The next step is to determine the function of the 25,000 Arabidopsis genes. This work has already begun with the organization of the "2010 Project" by the NSF and others as part of a world-wide Arabidopsis functional genomics effort, which will be coordinated in a similar manner to the Arabidopsis genome sequencing project.





Funding for the AGI was provided by government agencies on three continents鈥攖he National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the European Union, and the Chiba Prefectural Government of Japan.
Reply:Do you mean "tumbleweed"? As in what you see in Westerns, rolling across the plains?





If so, then they are shrubs growing in arid plains or salt-flats. They belong to a number of related species, which all share the trait of breaking free from their roots in autumn.


The main body of the plant is then blown across the plains, scattering its seeds as it goes, while the root stock survives, and sprouts again the next year.