Once a year, the world-wide community of Arabidopsis researchers gathers to review and discuss what has been accomplished in their field. The proceedings for the most recent Conference on Arabidopsis Research are published in a 600-page book that summarizes each laboratory's progress in one or two pages. Ecker is growing about 17 thousand Arabidopsis plants in the basement of Leidy Lab, aiming to produce complete sets of mutant seeds, about 25,000 per set, that can be distributed and studied by these labs. Each research group will look for mutations in the specific process that is the focus of their expertise. On top of structural and functional genomics, Ecker and his colleagues have been closely studying ethylene signal transduction in Arabidopsis, the genetic pathway whose activation allows the weed to detect the gas.
Ethylene is a growth-inhibiting gas, the equivalent of a hormone in animals.
So he embarks on this sequencing project and becomes an international leader in that. This is an intellectual and organizational tour de force. He still has people working on the plant developmental process, plus he's running this enormous genomics project. You can use the reference book to locate the gene in Arapidopsis that stimulates the ethylene response. I guarantee you it's going to be the same gene in wheat.