Knowable Magazine
By Rachel Ehrenberg 11.03.2025
In November of 1956, after weeks of protests and calls for free elections in Hungary, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush the uprising. Well over a hundred thousand people fled the country seeking asylum. Among them was a young geneticist named George Rédei, who headed for the Austrian border with a small vial of seeds tucked in his pocket.
The seeds belonged to a spindly weed in the mustard family called Arabidopsis thaliana. Today, that weed is widely regarded as a botanical superstar. Arabidopsis has been the focus of some 100,000 research papers. Its seeds have flown around the Moon; it is the go-to plant for experiments on the International Space Station. And when the scientific community decided which plant should be the first to have its genome sequenced, Arabidopsis emerged as the winner. This year marks the 25th anniversary of when the world got its first glimpse at that genome, launching the much-studied plant toward even greater fame and scientific value.
Super Sleuth
