Category: Uncategorized

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend on the theme of plant kin recognition. Here we look at the root and leaf responses of plants to the presence of kin, and at ways plants can game the relationship game to their own advantage. All these studies reinforce the fact that plants are not just plastic cut-outs, but sophisticated sentient beings. View in LinkedIn

VIRGIN BIRTH IN FRUIT FLIES. "Of 40 Drosophila species screened to date, a majority have shown some ability to at least initiate parthenogenetic development. In one case, Drosophila mangebeirai, natural populations are entirely female, making it the only obligate parthenogenetic species of Drosophila. Only a few of the species that exhibit the ability to undergo early embryonic development of unfertilized eggs successfully respond to selection for parthenogenetic production of adult flies." https://lnkd.in/gPUGWFf View in LinkedIn

HAPOID CELL LINES. "In vertebrates, the first haploid cell lines were obtained more than 40 years ago from frogs. Despite this, the availability of isolated vertebrate haploid cell lines is limited. Mammalian (especially human) haploid cell lines are of particular interest, because genetic screening in mammalian cells is directly applicable to medicinal and pharmacological research." https://lnkd.in/gHK6Jfp View in LinkedIn

VIRGIN BIRTH OF FEMALES. "While male-producing parthenogenesis is rare, female-producing parthenogenesis is widespread among animals and mostly obligate, with many documented cases in species-rich invertebrate groups such as insects, nematodes and crustaceans, and with only few examples in vertebrates." https://lnkd.in/gvZ8CFZ View in LinkedIn

"IN DIPLOID CELLS, heterozygous mutations often lead to no phenotypic changes because a functional allele on a second chromosome set can mask the effects of the disruption of the same allele on the first chromosome set." http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/16/10/23604/htm View in LinkedIn

AUTOMICTIC. "Thus, automictic parthenogenesis is the mechanism underlying the occasional production of sons and daughters well known for many species of bagworm moths and recently described in some reptile species, including Komodo dragons and snakes." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215007824 View in LinkedIn

LEAF ORIENTATIONS. "When plants of Arabidopsis thaliana are cultivated in rows of coetaneous kin neighbours (plants of the same accession) the growth of their leaves is horizontally reoriented towards the empty spaces out of the row, increasing self-shading and reducing mutual shading among plants. This growth pattern is not observed among nonkin plants." https://lnkd.in/gD_46dv View in LinkedIn

CHEATING. "The stability of cooperative interactions among different species can be compromised by cheating. In the plant-mycorrhizal fungi symbiosis, a single mycorrhizal network may interact with many plants, providing the opportunity for individual plants to cheat by obtaining nutrients from the fungi without donating carbon. Here we determine whether kin selection may favour plant investment in the mycorrhizal network, reducing the incentive to cheat when relatives interact with a single network." https://lnkd.in/gAWcQQc View in LinkedIn

EXPECTED ELSEWHERE. "Having found kin discrimination once, we expect to find kin discrimination elsewhere in plants, since variable dispersal, variable competitive situations, and increases in fitness when competing with kin, are found in other plants. Other competitive traits, such as stem elongation and apical dominance, are the most probable candidates to exhibit plastic responses contingent on kinship of neighbours." https://lnkd.in/d7SNVuH View in LinkedIn

PROFOUND FINDING. "If kin discrimination via root–root interactions proves widespread, it will profoundly change how we view competition in plants. Our results, because we used maternal sibships, indicate a genetic or maternally derived mechanism for kin recognition involving root communication. However, the mechanism is probably different from the self/non-self mechanism, because plants recognize genetically identical individuals as non-self." http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/4/435.short View in LinkedIn