George Rédei: a founder of Arabidopsis as the reference flowering plant
I recently stumbled across this fascinating article written by Erik Potter at the University of Missouri-Columbia (aka ‘Mizzou’.) Titled “From Apathy to Apogee”, this remarkable piece describes the long-term commitment by scientist George Rédei to establish Arabidopsis thaliana as arguably the most important model plant. Starting with his early life in Hungary, he followed his father’s footsteps in plant science before being deported to a forced labor camp during World War II. Surviving that, he began doctoral work in Budapest studying inheritance in tomato before fleeing as a refugee to the US to become an assistant professor at Mizzou in 1957. He brought with him the belief that Arabidopsis was an ideal organism for the study of plant genetics.
The article notes that “for 20 years, Rédei was the only scientist in the US. working on” Arabidopsis, and he faced significant resistance to getting his work funded, ironically including by the National Science Foundation- the very agency that decades later provide funding- to the tune of $100 million dollars- to sequence and characterize the Arabidopsis genome.
Helped in no small part by fellow plant scientists Chris and Shauna Somerville, who had discovered Rédei’s meticulous groundbreaking work on the plant in 1978, Arabidopsis researchers reached a critical mass in the late 1980s. In 1987, Chris Somerville organized the first International Conference on Arabidopsis (ICAR) of the '“modern era” in East Lansing, Michigan, where Rédei was invited to give an important platform talk. Arguably as close to a “rock star” as one can get in the plant sciences, “A lot of people were happy to see him,” Somerville said. “He was a pioneer.” In 1991, as interest and research in Arabidopsis was increasing dramatically, Rédei retired and moved to Germany as a visiting professor at the Max Planck Institute.
In 2000, Arabidopsis became the first plant- and the third eukaryote after S. cerevisiae (baker’s yeast) and C. elegans (nematode worm)- to have its genome sequenced. This monumental breakthrough- made possible only via the Multinational Coordinated Arabidopsis thaliana Genome Research Project initiated in 1990- launched Arabidopsis research into the scientific stratosphere. It laid the groundwork for the NSF’s 2010 Project and many similar large-scale projects funded in countries throughout the world.
The article notes Rédei’s additional significant contributions in publishing post-retirement including highly-cited articles, his Genetics Manual covering 18,000 genetic concepts and terms, and his expanded Encyclopedia of Genetics, Genomics, Proteomics and Informatics that was 2,201 pages long and noted by the Journal Nature as “remarkably clear and up to date” and “one of the best textbooks of general genetics.”
As fitting a foundational scientist of his import, Mizzou dedicated the plant growth facilities section of the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center to Rédei in 2004.
Arabidopsis researchers- and anyone that uses resources and datasets derived from Arabidopsis- owe a debt of gratitude to George Rédei, and to the early adopters that he inspired, including Chris Somerville, Maarten Koornneef, and others. The most frequently used variant in the lab is one developed by Rédei: Columbia (Col-O), as noted in this article from 2014 (and confirmed via personal communication with ABRC, 2023.) Side note- while the accession is labeled “Columbia”, the line originated in Germany.
Chris Somerville: “essentially everybody uses it”; the discoveries Arabidopsis has allowed are “too numerous to describe. We’ve revolutionized the field.”
George Rédei: Born: June 14, 1921 (Vienna, Austria)
Died: November 10, 2008 (Nashville, Tennessee, USA)
