Ruth has assembled the following series, running all of this week. Ruth writes:

It's Celebrate Research Week here at UBC! Free seminars & lectures, open houses, and symposia are held throughout the Lower Mainland and the Okanagan to inspire and inform the public. On Botany Photo of the Day, we're joining in with a series on UBC research (and researchers!) as a way to show our appreciation for all the hard-working research folk from the underground laboratory world -- the ones only seen late at night traveling the transit system to get a few hours of sleep at home before heading back to the lab in the early morning. Thank you!

Arabidopsis thaliana is a well-researched species within the Brassicaceae. Its genome is especially tiny, at only 125 Mb (million base pairs) -- all of which are sequenced. Many of the researchers in the UBC Department of Botany are working with this species and examining it from many different approaches.

George Haughn of the UBC Botany department writes a few words about his research:

"The seed coat is a specialized tissue that develops following fertilization to provide a protective layer for the embryo. In some species, including Arabidopsis thaliana, the seed coat epidermal cells synthesize and secrete large quantities of polysaccharide mucilage between the cell membrane and primary cell wall."

Ruth interjects: Mucilage is a polymer of sorts found in plants. It is thought to aid in water storage and seed germination. Cacti and succulents tend to have a great deal of mucilage. If you have ever treated a sunburn with a home remedy you can just imagine that goo from inside an aloe.

George Haughn continues: "Upon exposure of the mature seed to water, the mucilage swells, ruptures the primary cell wall and envelops the seed to form a protective layer. This mucilage is similar in composition to a major component of the plant and secondary cell wall (pectin) that is important for cementing of plant cells together. Because mucilage is made in large quantities at a specific time in development, it can easily be isolated. It is not required for viability under laboratory conditions."

"The Arabidopsis seed coat epidermal cells represent a useful model system for using genetics to study complex polysaccharide biosynthesis and secretion. We use mutants unable to produce normal mucilage as an approach to identifying and cloning genes that are required for these processes with the intent to better understand cell wall structure and function."