[TFortunato]

Tobacco is one of a handful of plant "model organisms", basically meaning that we have a lot of studies already done and genetic / metabolic information about it available.

Scientists like using these when doing basic research of, e.g. gene function, because that wealth of prior information available reduces the amount of "unknown unknowns" to account for.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_organism

[cassepipe]

So you are saying tobacco is the vegetal world equivalent of the mice !

[kurthr]

Yep, it's easy to grow in quantity. It has a relatively large/complete plant genome and, I think tobacco mosaic virus was used to implant genes early on. Another plant often used is corn since as I remember it allows plasmids to be implanted for new proteins (and you can add more plasmids to increase production).

[pfdietz]

I think that would be Arabidopsis thaliana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabidopsis_thaliana

[Ultimatt]

Tobacco isn't a model organism at all. Solacea genomes only really got sorted in the late 2010s. Its worth pointing out if you could do something in Tobacco you could have done it in Tomato or Potato, you know those crops that dont kill people globally but sustain them. Arabidopsis thaliana (a type of cress) is the small plant model organism, not because it's biologically significant, but because it had a tiny diploid genome that could be mapped early and it's easy to grow quickly in a lab and seeds fast.

[TFortunato]

Sorry if I was unclear in my statement. I assumed, without access to the article, that this release is using "Tobacco" loosely to mean "some sort of Nicotiana", likely Nicotiana Benthamiana. Calling N. Benthi "Tobacco" is something I've seen in other press releases and popular descriptions of plant research.

Definitely not trying to suggest it's the only model plant! Like you said, Arabidopsis is huge, and there are other plants used commonly as well. Just pointing out that using N. Benthi / "Tobacco" in research is def not uncommon for some kinds of plant research. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18616398/

All that said, I'm not a plant biologist! I'm just an engineer who happened to work for a bit of time in Biotech, and is trying to continue learning about that field on the side, so feel to take my thoughts on this with a grain of salt or 2!

[Obi_Juan_Kenobi]

Benthy, maize, and arabidopsis are the three major plant models. Hundreds of labs specialize in benthy, thousands more use it. It is absolutely a model by any conceivable definition of the term.

One of the primary reasons it is a model is due to transient expression in the leaves via TMV. You can quickly assay many constructs on the same plant with a simple overnight experiment.

[throwawaymaths]

Tobacco is a model organism because TMV is so easy to work with. You can grow tobacco to maturity quicky, transfect it with TMV, isolate the TMV and then transfect another generation extremely rapidly, with low effort, and you don't even need PPE really.

It's so easy to work with that chemists (who often suck at biology) use it as a model for supramolecular chemistry.