A small weed plant possessing 70,000 kilobase pairs in its genome, with very little repetitive DNA. This makes it an ideal model for studying plant genetics. At least two genetic maps have been created fox Arabidopsis thaliana (one using yeast artificial chromosomes). Because of this a large base of knowledge about it has been accumulated by the scientific community.
Arabidopsis thaliana was first genetically engineered in 1986. In 1994, researchers succeeded in transferring genes for polyhydroxylbutylate (“biodegradable plastic”) production mXo Arabidopsis thaliana. Because production of polyhydroxylbutylate (PHB) requires simultaneous expression of three genes (i.e., the PHB production process is “polygenic”)—yet researchers have only been able to insert a maximum of two genes—they have to insert two genes into one plant and one gene into a second plant, then finally get the (total) three genes into (offspring) plants via traditional breeding.