It is always welcome to winkle out these ancient developmental histories and gain insight. The surprise for me is that out of the hundreds of thousands of prospective plants that we could be investigating, we are working on water cress and the snapdragon
The snapdragon in particular, is a great surprise. It was my favorite flower when I was growing up in Western Ontario . I do not mean the domesticated version but the wild version which was common along the more sunny fence rows on the farm I grew up on.
It was easy to compare with domesticated versions always at hand. It is also a complex flower that we used to learn flower parts in our classes.
So maybe she has a few more secrets to tell us.
100-Million-Year-Old Mistake Provides Snapshot Of Evolution
by Staff Writers
By tracing back through the evolutionary 'tree' for flowering plants, the researchers calculate the gene duplication took place around 120 million years ago. But the mutation which separates how snapdragons and rock cress use this extra gene happened around 20 million years later.
Research by
The findings - published in the Proceedings of the National Academy
In a number of plants, the gene involved in making male and female organs has duplicated to create two, very similar, copies. In rockcress (Arabidopsis), one copy still makes male and female parts, but the other copy has taken on a completely new role: it makes seed pods shatter open.
In snapdragons (Antirrhinum), both genes are still linked to sex organs, but one copy makes mainly female parts, while still retaining a small role in male organs - but the other copy can only make male.
"Snapdragons are on the cusp of splitting the job of making male and female organs between these two genes, a key moment in the evolutionary process," says lead researcher Professor of Plant Development, Brendan Davies, from Leeds ' Faculty of Biological Sciences.
"More genes with different roles gives an organism added complexity and opens the door to diversification and the creation of new species."
By tracing back through the evolutionary 'tree' for flowering plants, the researchers calculate the gene duplication took place around 120 million years ago. But the mutation which separates how snapdragons and rock cress use this extra gene happened around 20 million years later.
The researchers have discovered that the different behaviour of the gene in each plant is linked to one amino acid. Although the genes look very similar, the proteins they encode don't always have this amino acid.
When it is present, the activity of the protein is limited to making only male parts. When the amino acid isn't there, the protein is able to interact with a range of other proteins involved in flower production, enabling it to make both male and female parts.
"A small mutation in the gene fools the plant's machinery to insert an extra amino acid and this tiny change has created a dramatic difference in how these plants control making their reproductive organs," says Professor Davies.
"This is evolution in action, although we don't know yet whether this mutation will turn out to be a dead end and go no further or whether it might lead to further complexities.
"Our research is an excellent example of how a chance imperfection sparks evolutionary change. If we lived in a perfect world, it would be a much less interesting one, with no diversity and no chance for new species to develop."
The researchers now plan to study the protein interactions which enable the production of both male and female parts as part of further investigation into the genetic basis by which plants produce flowers.
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