quote: scientists say plants sometimes select better bits of DNA in order to develop normally even when their predecessors carried genetic flaws.
In the Purdue experiment, researchers found that a watercress plant sometimes corrects the genetic code it inherited from its flawed parents and grows normally like its grandparents and other ancestors.
"This means that inheritance can happen more flexibly than we thought," said Robert Pruitt, the paper's senior author.
Pruitt's team didn't find the template in the plants' DNA or chromosomes where genetic information is stored and they did not determine whether a particular gene is encoded to carry out the recovery of the normal DNA.
Wow ... I think that's pretty neat. I hope they're successful in finding out exactly where the grandparents' code is stored and how it is retrieved.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
They've already got a pretty good idea, don't they? The RNA?
Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
quote: might be lurking in the plant's RNA
I don't know how good of an idea it is? Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Eh, good point. I read an article on New Scientist about this this morning, and misremembered how certain they were about it.
Posted by Bean Counter (Member # 6001) on :
Could be part of the rezipping process that checks for errors, perhaps it amounts to a spot checking protien in the DNA itself.
![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)