My few forays into plant proteomics have impressed upon me how challenging that whole branch of life is to work with. For people who haven't tried it, imagine this scenario: Your model organism, most commonly known as
ScumBag Arabidopsis, which almost everything is based on, was chosen as model because it has a genome juuuuust large enough to allow it to keep alive. Plant gene products are also relatively tiny, so it isn't uncommon to have genomes in plants that are 2 or 3 times larger than mammals to sort through, and your results get to be compared back to the barely relevant duck weed plant and it's stupid tiny genome.
But -- holy cow, we kind of need plants, and we should probably try to understand things like drought resistance so we can make it the few decades we have while this planet is still capable of supporting life at all. What could possibly tie these words I'm typing together?
This great new review!
The historical perspective timeline might be my favorite part of the review. But the models for inducing stress response through increasing salinity, etc., make it seem like crop researchers are really thinking about the challenges the world will be facing in the very near future. I'll take every little bit of cautious optimism for the future that I can get my hands on.
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