The aquatic Lemnaceae family, commonly called duckweed, comprises some of the smallest and fastest growing angiosperms known on Earth. Their tiny size, rapid growth by clonal propagation, and facile uptake of labeled compounds from the media were attractive features that made them a well-known model for plant biology from 1950 to 1990. Interest in duckweed has steadily regained momentum over the past decade, driven in part by the growing need to identify alternative plants from traditional agricultural crops that can help tackle urgent societal challenges, such as climate change and rapid population expansion. Propelled by rapid advances in genomic technologies, recent studies with duckweed again highlight the potential of these small plants to enable discoveries in diverse fields from ecology to chronobiology. Building on established community resources, duckweed is reemerging as a platform to study plant processes at the systems level and to translate knowledge gained for field deployment to address some of society’s pressing needs. This review details the anatomy, development, physiology, and molecular characteristics of the Lemnaceae to introduce them to the broader plant research community. We highlight recent research enabled by Lemnaceae to demonstrate how these plants can be used for quantitative studies of complex processes and for revealing potentially novel strategies in plant defense and genome maintenance.

中文翻译：

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浮萍科的回归：浮萍作为基因组学和后基因组学时代的模型植物系统


水生浮萍科，通常称为浮萍，由地球上已知的一些最小且生长最快的被子植物组成。它们体积小、通过克隆繁殖快速生长以及容易从培养基中摄取标记化合物这些吸引人的特征使它们成为 1950 年至 1990 年间植物生物学的著名模型。在过去十年中，人们对浮萍的兴趣稳步恢复。部分原因是越来越需要从传统农作物中寻找替代植物，以帮助应对气候变化和人口快速扩张等紧迫的社会挑战。在基因组技术快速进步的推动下，最近对浮萍的研究再次强调了这些小型植物在从生态学到时间生物学等各个领域的发现的潜力。以现有的社区资源为基础，浮萍正在重新成为一个平台，用于在系统层面研究植物过程，并将获得的知识转化为现场部署，以满足社会的一些紧迫需求。这篇综述详细介绍了浮萍科的解剖学、发育、生理学和分子特征，将其介绍给更广泛的植物研究界。我们重点介绍浮萍科最近开展的研究，以证明这些植物如何用于复杂过程的定量研究，并揭示植物防御和基因组维护方面潜在的新策略。