• Producer(s):

    ARTE FRANCE, MIROIR (LE)

  • Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2008

  • Language(s):

    German, French

  • Rights:

    NON-THEATRICAL, TV, VOD, DVD, INTERNET

It's not easy to believe that people travel the world for the sake of an invisible plant that is neither particularly beautiful, nor has great economic worth.

Yet that's precisely what some scientists do. One of them, a geneticist at the French research association INRA, takes us on a journey to the Kyrgyzstan Mountains in his passionate quest for arabis. He is on his quest for good reason - this small, wild plant, which for so many centuries remained perfectly anonymous, has in just a few years become the key plant in genetic research. It was chosen as a "model organism" and since then, in laboratories the world over, arabis has been grown, studied, cloned, and modified, in an attempt to pierce the mysteries of life, such as DNA mechanisms and gene function.
In all its innocence, major issues have arisen around arabis - links between the vegetal and the human, patenting the human, genetically modified organisms, and revolutions in the agro-industry. These many new fields are now the subject of debate all over the world.