Article
Gardening for science
Mutants are growing in one of the basement rooms at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). But instead of monsters, these are small plants that serve as living subjects for science. This is the realm of Dorota Jaworska, the institute's plant facility technician, who takes care of thousands of small experiments.
Some fields of biology require the study of living organisms. At ISTA, scientists use Arabidopsis thaliana, also known as thale cress, for their experiments. Caring for thousands of these plants is a complex undertaking, but Dorota Jaworska is up to the task. “I've been a plant person all my life,” Dorota smiles. During a break on a hot summer day, she sits on a terrace overlooking the campus pond. In the white building behind her, Arabidopsis thaliana grows in several windowless rooms. She takes us through a day of gardening for science.
Inconspicuous but Crucial
“The first thing I do in the morning is check on all the plants and see if anything unexpected has happened overnight,” says Dorota, standing in one of the in vivo rooms where the plants live. She points to the shelves lining the walls of the small room. Their bases are stacked with a myriad of small, inconspicuous plants. “We have to carefully control the humidity, temperature, and lighting in these rooms to create stable and reproducible conditions for the experiments,” she explains.
Although it is not a particularly striking plant, Arabidopsis thaliana plays a crucial role in plant biology. Selected for research purposes by German scientist Friedrich Laibach at the beginning of the 20th century, it has become the standard for genetic experiments on plants. It can be cultivated quickly, matures in just six weeks, and produces an enormous amount of tiny seeds.
“Watering is a science in itself”
After the initial check, Dorota begins watering the plants. “Watering is a science in itself,” she laughs. “It's very much based on experience—because if I were to measure the soil moisture for each plant, I wouldn't be finished by the end of the day, as I have up to 15,000 plants to deal with.”
Every single plant is important to her, but each tub of plants is used for a different experimental purpose. For Dorota, the plants are anonymous, so she needs the help of scientists to take care of them all.
Close collaboration
“Maintaining the facility is not a task for one person alone,” says Dorota. “I work closely with up to 30 scientists from the Benková and Friml groups. It can be a lot of work to coordinate everyone, but we have a great community here.”
The two research groups—led by Eva Benková and Jiří Friml—study the developmental and cellular biology of plants. For example, they investigate how plants find nitrogen in the soil, how plants heal their wounds, and how plants can sense gravity.
Dorota points out: “In all these research projects, we have to follow strict protocols to ensure that there is no contamination and that the experiments can be reproduced by other laboratories.” Since the plants in the Plant Facility are genetically modified, none of them are allowed to leave these rooms without being enclosed in a special sealed box. “We also work with IST Austria's Lab Support Facility to sterilize all organic waste and even the wastewater produced in this facility.”
The IST Austria Plant Facility is not only used for science; both Dorota and the scientists contribute to the institute's annual Open Campus Day. There, they present their plants to the visiting public.
“We have even carried out projects with schoolchildren who grew plants from seeds in order to conduct experiments with them,” says Dorota. Next, she leads us into a special room filled with strange lights, where her plant experiments begin their life.
“It's wonderful to show how science works in practice and to share our passion for it.”
The in vitro room, bathed in pink light, is where the Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings grow. “Here we use LEDs for special lighting with only blue and red light to control the growth of the plants,” explains Dorota as she handles the fragile, transparent plates. The tiny plants are placed on these plates in a substrate of agar, which provides them with nutrients. With this special lighting, the scientists influence the growth rate, leaf and root formation, and many other aspects of the plants' development.
Once the seedlings are large enough, they are transported to a separate room and repotted. “That's the dirty part of the job. Sometimes I help the scientists with this, but most of the time I have to focus on the health of the plants, coordinate the processes, and make sure that all the stations are well stocked,” Dorota says of her daily routine. “After repotting, we either place the plants in incubators, which look like warm, brightly lit refrigerators, or they go into the in vivo rooms.”
When the seeds are ripe after six weeks, the plants are moved to another room to be harvested. Their seeds are tiny, smaller than a pinhead. “We collect many thousands of them and have to be very careful not to mix them up.”
After harvesting, the seeds are stored in a seed bank to preserve them for future use over many years. Every laboratory that works with Arabidopsis thaliana has its own genetic lines—a family tree that includes plants with specific characteristics such as size, appearance, or resistance to temperature fluctuations and drought. Similar to collectibles or trading cards, scientists also exchange seeds from different lines to compare and research them.
“We have over 5,000 different genetic lines in our seed bank. That's millions of individual seeds in total,” explains Dorota. “We often send them to other laboratories we collaborate with and receive samples of their lines in return.”
“It was risky, but it worked out perfectly.”
Growing up in the countryside in the small town of Krasnystaw in eastern Poland, Dorota went on to study landscape architecture and moved to Scotland to work in a sculpture garden for contemporary art. “I've always been interested in plants and caring for them,” she recalls. “In the sculpture garden, we looked at plants from an architectural and artistic perspective. Later, when I worked with dried specimens in the herbarium at the Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, I entered a more scientific field.”
When she moved to Austria in 2016, she found a job at the IST Austria Plant Facility. “A lot has changed in the five years I've been working here. Not only have we expanded the facility, but we've also conducted experiments with different climate, soil, and light conditions,” she says. “It was risky to do this in an operational facility, and we had to work closely with all the scientists involved, but it worked out excellently.”
“I only have one cactus at home. That's enough.”
Dorota admits that her job can also be very demanding. "I support so many people—each with their own project that is important to them—and I have to try to take care of many plants equally. But I'm glad that I've built a good relationship with the scientists and have been able to meet people from many different countries and walks of life. My customers are primarily the plants, but behind the plants are my colleagues. So when the plants are happy, my colleagues are happy too.“ When asked if she also takes care of plants at home, she laughs. ”I only have one cactus at home. That's enough."