Turning a Wild Plant Into a Model - A deja vu Story

In the past two decades we have witnessed how a useless wild weed has been transformed from an anonymous into a model plant, probably the most widely "cultivated" plant species. The process has been rather slowly in the beginning, very laborious on the way, extremely expensive and time Consuming, bur the outcome is priceless - the knowledge that is most likely to frame mid fill the blueprint of the first artificial plant, as system biology promises. Tic plant species is Arabidopsis thaliana and the "growers" arc highly qualified researchers worldwide. This review introduces a new anonymous - Brachypodium distachyon - that raised big hopes for addressing specific problems of fundamental and practical biology in temperate cereals and forage grasses, and is rapidly becoming a "sweetheart" for the researchers working with these crops, and not only.