Month: September 2022

NEW PARADIGMS. "One of the objections for kin selection to actually occur in plants is that the kin recognition mechanisms were thought to be impossible in the plant kingdom (i.e. lack of sensors). This has recently been challenged by experimental studies showing differential response of root growth depending on the relatedness of neighbors, providing a major opportunity to explore new hypotheses and perspectives." https://lnkd.in/gWWRrBP View in LinkedIn

NEW PERSPECTIVES. "The fact that plants can recognize the shape of their neighbors and rearrange their leaf position in consequence is novel and very exciting. It could be a cooperative or an altruistic behavior in a species where populations are viscous, the other mechanism described by Hamilton (1964) allowing for kin selection, that is, where dispersal is rare enough for neighbors in a population to be closely related." https://lnkd.in/gWWRrBP View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this perspective on the nuanced and complicated lives of plants. It has been often stated that because they move slowly, human are often sublimely oblivious to these phenomena. But with the help of time lapse cinematography, we can appreciate a little more their animated live, growth and mating cycles. https://lnkd.in/gvP8Mxa View in LinkedIn

Why India's farmers want to conserve indigenous heirloom rice https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/24/why-indias-farmers-want-to-conserve-indigenous-heirloom-rice?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

DIPLOID DOMINANCE. "The dominance of the diploid state in higher organisms, with haploidy generally confined to the gametic phase, has led to the perception that diploidy is favored by selection. This view is highlighted by the fact that no known female organism within the Metazoa exists exclusively (or even for a prolonged period) in a haploid state." https://lnkd.in/gYgazXK View in LinkedIn

ENTIRELY HAPLOID FEMALE MITES. "We used fluorescence microscopy and variation at nine microsatellite loci to show that the false spider mite, Brevipalpus phoenicis, consists of haploid female parthenogens. We show that this reproductive anomaly is caused by infection by an undescribed endosymbiotic bacterium, which results in feminization of haploid genetic males." https://lnkd.in/gYgazXK View in LinkedIn

ARTIFICIAL HAPLOIDS. "For the artificial production of haploids several methods are known to be useful, such as crosses between distantly related species, pollination with X-rayed pollen, selection of twin seedlings and delayed pollination. However, the tendency to haploid parthenogenesis is controlled by the genetic make-up of a given strain and an application of those methods may be not always successful." https://lnkd.in/gZ6EwgN View in LinkedIn

ALTERNATIVE GAMETES. "Recently, we and others have derived mammalian androgenetic and parthenogenetic haploid embryonic stem cells (ahESCs and phESCs), and showed that ahESCs can replace gametes to produce offspring, which provided alternative resources for reproduction." https://lnkd.in/gCT7Dcz View in LinkedIn

TWO GAMETES NEEDED. "Normal mammalian development requires participation of both maternal and paternal genomes because of the existence of genomic imprinting, whereas the gynogenetic and androgenetic embryos die shortly after implantation." https://lnkd.in/gCT7Dcz View in LinkedIn

BIMATERNAL MAMMALS. "Birth of fertile bimaternal offspring following intracytoplasmic injection of parthenogenetic haploid embryonic stem cells. We thus establish a novel strategy of generating bimaternal mammals, which is valuable to uncover the function of genomic imprinting, and to improve assisted reproduction in diverse mammalian species." https://lnkd.in/gCT7Dcz View in LinkedIn