Month: September 2022

80,000 YEAR OLD GRASS COLONIES. "A huge colony of the sea grass Posidonia oceanica in the Mediterranean Sea is estimated to be between 12,000 and 200,000 years old. The maximum age is theoretical, as the region it occupies was above water at some point between 10,000 and 80,000 years ago." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organisms View in LinkedIn

10,000 YEAR OLD ENDOLITHS. "Some endoliths have extremely long lives. In August 2013 researchers reported evidence of endoliths in the ocean floor with a generation time of 10,000 years. These are slowly metabolizing, not in a dormant state." (Endoliths are extremophiles living inside rock). http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organisms View in LinkedIn

APICAL MERISTEMS. "In contrast to most animals, plants have a tremendous plasticity in the form and function of their organs. This is particularly relevant in perennials, in which the apical meristem of at least one of their shoots remains indeterminate beyond its first phase of growth and development. Perennial plants organize their body growth in the vertical plane, based on the division and differentiation of meristems." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn

PLANT MERISTEMS. "This structure allows perennial plants to explore the environment vertically in the search for light, and enables some of them to be very large and to have a very long life span. Some trees such as sequoias and pines, among others, can grow up to 100 m in height and survive for centuries and even millennia." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn

REGENERATIVE CELLS IN PLANTS. "Other species, such as some herbaceous perennials, can also survive for centuries by keeping their meristems intact." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn

REGENERATIVE CELLS IN ANIMALS. "A single haematopoietic stem cell can reconstitute the entire haematopoietic system of an irradiated mammal. Progenitor cell populations have been identified within most mammalian organs, including skin, blood, bone, reproductive tissues, skeletal muscle, kidney, lung, liver, intestine, heart and brain." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn

REGENERATION. "By contrast, some animals, such as zebrafish, can restore normal organ (heart) function after severe injury, and a few species of animals, such as some marine clonal invertebrates (e.g. many cnidarians), can even regenerate their entire body as a result of their modular development, a trait shared with plants.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn

PLANT MODULARITY "seems to increase organism plasticity in terms of whole-organism regeneration, a property that has been maintained with increasing complexity during evolution of species over time within the plant kingdom, but not within the animal kingdom." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn

PLANT MODULARITY AND SENESCENCE. "However, maintaining organism integrity with increased complexity in an evolutionary timescale has some costs. In a meta-analysis of plant life-history tables, data provided by Silvertown et al. support the idea that organisms which remain integrated in modules are more likely to senesce than organisms whose ramets separate into unconnected entities." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn

MERISTEMS AND MODULARITY. "Agricultural and gardening practices continuously show that not only are entire plant shoots restored, but also that their growth and fruit production is increased after pruning. The only secret is to leave some vegetative meristems alive." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn