The Weeds that Revolutionized Plant Science and Became Botanic Superstar

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In November 1956, after weeks of protests and demands for free elections in Hungary, Soviet tanks entered Budapest. More than 100,000 people fled. There was young geneticist George Rédei, who fled to the Austrian border with a small jar of seeds in his pocket. The seeds belonged to a thin herb from the mustard family called Arabidopsis thaliana. Today that herb is a botanic superstar. It has starred about 100,000 scientific articles. Its seeds h…