The second of our video podcasts from PlantSci 2012 is from Katherine Denby, from the University of Warwick. She works on how plants respond to changes in their environment, and in particular in response to pathogens. If you have a slightly cloudy idea of what systems biology is she explains it very well here, including how it can affect future food security. She also explains why she works on Arabidopsis, saying, “It’s just so much quicker to do things in Arabidopsis!”