Objectives

Summary: This lesson reveals both the process and the power of conducting experiments with jar1, an Arabidopsis mutant that is insensitive to the hormone jasmonic acid (JA). You will meet a graduate student conducting research under the guidance of an expert in JA biology.

After completing this activity students will be able to:

1. Explain why jasmonic acid (JA) is a plant hormone.
2. Describe why arabidopsis plants with a mutation in a gene (JAR1) involved in JA response are useful subjects in experiments designed to understand JA control of plant biology.
3. Interpret data from experiments designed to test hypotheses about the role of the JAR1 gene in plant response to insect feeding.
4. Design future experiments to test hypotheses on the genetic control of plant response to JA.