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DEEPLY ENTANGLED. "Vestigial attributes such as pharyngeal pouches reflect the intertwined nature of phylogenetic and ontogenetic transformations that are impossible to disentangle." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this (coincidental?) linking of Morning Glories from the Edo Period in Japan with the emergence of tulip mania in Europe, linked by the Dutch East India Company. Both were prized for extraordinary flower variants, the first caused by transposons, and the second by a virus. What a luxury to be dedicated to rare flowers, oblivious of a world turned topsy-turvy by megalomaniacs and madness. View in LinkedIn

STREAK VIRUS. "Black flower color of dahlia (Dahlia variabilis). We report that the purple color is not caused by a mutation, as previously thought, but by infection with tobacco streak virus. Tobacco streak virus suppressed post-transcriptional gene silencing and caused a flower color change in black dahlias, which supported the role of cyanidin-based anthocyanins for black flower appearance." https://lnkd.in/dSXuMUE View in LinkedIn

VIRAL ERADICATION. "The bulb industry views the destruction of the mosaic virus as one of its proudest achievements, and with good reason. It is the florists’ equivalent of the elimination of smallpox. Yet it can hardly be denied that something has been lost in the winning of this war. The infinite variety that each broken tulip could display is gone, and with it much of the flower’s capacity to fascinate and astound." https://lnkd.in/dkNDdDY View in LinkedIn

ISSUE OF INHERITANCE. "Crucial difference, however, is that whereas scars and other traces of injury (e.g., from regenerated limbs) remain a part of that organism, they are not passed along to the next generation, and in that essential sense they do not conform to a fundamental tenet of vestigiality as commonly understood." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

VIRAL PURGING. "Breeders today are trying to make Semper Augustus again. Surprising all of the former tulips have gone extinct and recently breeders eliminate tulips whenever they suspect some viruses to be present." https://lnkd.in/dqpDyTS View in LinkedIn

TWO VESTIGIAL SOURCES. "Both evolution and development might be said to leave vestigial remains not only in the phenotype we see, but also in the genotypic basis that helps to determine phenotypic expression (provided the genotypic changes are to the germ line, and thus heritable). Both kinds of vestiges result from solitary events in individual organisms." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

SEMPER AUGUSTUS. "Many believe that the Tulip ‘Semper Augustus’ is the holy grail of all tulip bulbs. Made famous during the well documented Tulip-mania period of 1637-1637, they were considered by many to be the most beautiful of all flowers and a pinnacle of achievement from the breeders." https://lnkd.in/d3W5rw7 View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR VESTIGES. "Just as illnesses, injuries, and other accidents of ontogeny often leave remains in the form of scars where tissues have incompletely healed from damage, chance events of phylogeny can likewise leave ‘vestiges’ in the form of molecules and nucleic acid sequences that are non-functional (as might apply to ‘junk DNA’)." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

TULIP GENOME. "The genetic complexity is high not only in tulips but also in maize, and other cultured plants such as rice or wheat. The accumulation of genes may result from breeding. In tulips the genome is almost tripled, three similar chromosomes accumulated, but did not quite stay identical but evolved separately to some extent. The plants can easily lose up to one third or even half of their genes, without much noticeable differences." https://lnkd.in/dqpDyTS View in LinkedIn