Looking at the sweet little plant called Thale Cresss or Mouse-ear Cress with its tiny white flowers you would probably never guess that it is somewhat of a supermodel in the world of plant science.
Thale Cress or Arabidopsis is a 'guinea pig' or 'lab rat' for plant biologists because despite its tiny size it acts much like larger organisms from peas to cedar trees.
Professor Ian Small, who in 2005 became a WA Premier's Fellow, is very familiar with this little flowering plant since he is renowned in the fields of molecular biology of plant organelles (which are like the body parts or organs of a cell) and the functional genomics of Arabidopsis.
He also has the auspicious duty of being head of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at UWA, which received a $12.5 million dollar grant to support its activities in 2005.
And, as if to show that distance is no barrier in research, Small is also the Director-Adjoint of the Plant Genomics Laboratory at the Evry Genopole in France. With the help of a little plant, Ian Small and his colleagues are furthering research that can lead to a better understanding of disease resistance in crops, develop plants that produce higher yields and are healthier and better for us.
