Re: So your parents had CAD QPlants?= Defy Mendel's Inheritance Laws³

From: Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD (andrew_at_heartmdphd.com)
Date: 03/23/05 

Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 08:45:10 -0500

It is written that what is impossible for man/Mendel is possible for
God.
 
At His service,

Andrew 

--
Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD
Board-Certified Cardiologist
**
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William Wagner wrote:
> 
> Tue Mar 22 16:05:01 2005 Pacific Time
> 
>       Plants Defy Mendel's Inheritance Laws, May Prompt Textbook Changes
> 
>        WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., March 22 (AScribe Newswire) -- Contrary to
> inheritance laws the scientific world has accepted for more than 100
> years, some plants revert to normal traits carried by their
> grandparents, bypassing genetic abnormalities carried by both parents.
> 
>         These mutant parent plants apparently have hidden templates
> containing genetic information from the preceding generation that can be
> transferred to their offspring, even though the traits aren't evident in
> the parents, according to Purdue University researchers. This discovery
> flies in the face of the scientific laws of inheritance first described
> by Gregor Mendel in the mid-1800s and still taught in classrooms around
> the world today.
> 
>         "This means that inheritance can happen more flexibly than we
> thought in the past," said Robert Pruitt, a Purdue Department of Botany
> and Plant Pathology molecular geneticist. "While Mendel's laws that we
> learned in high school still are fundamentally correct, they're not
> absolute."
> 
>         "If the inheritance mechanism we found in the research plant
> Arabidopsis exists in animals, too, it's possible that it will be an
> avenue for gene therapy to treat or cure diseases in both plants and
> animals."
> 
>         The study is published in the March 24 issue of the journal
> Nature.
> 
>         Pruitt and collaborator Susan Lolle found that Arabidopsis in
> which each parent plant had two copies of a mutant gene could produce
> progeny that didn't show the parents' deformity, but rather were normal
> like the grandparents. Under Mendelian laws, the offspring should have
> shown the same mutation.
> 
>         The first clue that the classic inheritance rules didn't always
> apply was the discovery of normal flowers on some offspring of mutant
> plants. In the deformed parents, the flowers were fused into tight
> balls. But in the grandparents and 10 percent of the grandchildren, the
> buds become 1-millimeter-long, bright white flowers that fully opened
> and radiated out from the center of a cluster.
> 
>         "If you take this mutant Arabidopsis, which has two copies of
> the altered gene, let it seed and then plant the seeds, 90 percent of
> the offspring will look like the parent, but 10 percent will look like
> the normal grandparents," Pruitt said. "Our genetic training tells us
> that's just not possible. This challenges everything we believe."
> 
>         "We've done a lot of experiments, described in this paper, that
> show none of the simple explanations account for this skipping of
> generations by an inherited trait."
> 
>         The scientists kept the plants in isolation so they couldn't
> accidentally crossbreed with plants that didn't have the mutated gene,
> called hothead, that causes organ fusion like that seen in the flowers.
> The researchers used molecular markers - bits of DNA that help identify
> and locate genes in organisms - to determine whether a plant carried
> normal or mutant copies of the genes.
> 
>         "It seems that these hothead-containing plants keep a cryptic
> copy of everything that was in the previous generation, even though it
> doesn't show up in the DNA, it's not in the chromosome," Pruitt said.
> "Some other type of gene sequence information that we don't really
> understand yet is modifying the inherited traits."
> 
>         Although the hothead gene tipped the researchers off to this
> unconventional inheritance cycle, Pruitt believes that this particular
> DNA sequence is just a trigger for the phenomenon. He suspects that a
> number of other genes and the proteins they produce are involved in
> activating this process.
> 
>         "We need to understand more about the molecular mechanics of how
> this process works," Pruitt said. "Then we will know exactly what role
> this gene plays."
> 
>         Pruitt's team already knows that animals don't have hothead
> genes, either normal or mutated, so the scientists must investigate
> which genes might affect this novel inheritance in both plants and
> animals.
> 
>         "There are probably a lot of other triggers yet to be
> discovered, and this mechanism for inheritance may require a different
> trigger to make it work in animals," he said.
> 
>         Once scientists understand more about the mechanism, they then
> may be able to manipulate it to modify genes already in plants and
> animals in order to correct mutations that cause diseases and abnormal
> growth.
> 
>         Though further research is required to learn how this form of
> inheritance happens and how it can help improve plants or animals
> through gene therapy, Pruitt said the discovery has opened an important
> new line of thinking.
> 
>         The other researchers involved with this study were Jennifer
> Victor, a former Purdue graduate student now at Butler University; and
> Jessica Young, a botany and plant pathology laboratory technician.
> Lolle, a Purdue research scientist, is currently at the National Science
> Foundation.
> 
>         The National Science Foundation provided funding for this
> research.
> 
>         - - - -
> 
>         CONTACTS: Robert Pruitt, pruittr@purdue.edu
> 
>         Susan A. Steeves, Purdue University News Service, 765-496-7481,
> ssteeves@purdue.edu
> 
>         RELATED WEB SITES:
> 
>         Purdue Department of Botany and Plant Pathology:
> http://www.btny.purdue.edu/
> 
>         Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
> 
>         National Science Foundation: http://www.nsf.gov/
> 
>         NOTE TO EDITORS: Broadcast-quality video and a copy of the
> research paper are available by contacting Susan Steeves, Purdue
> Department of Agricultural Communication, at 765-496-7481,
> ssteeves@purdue.edu.
> 
>         PHOTOS: Publication-quality photographs are available at (photo
> 1) http://ftp.purdue.edu/pub/uns/+2005/pruitt-inheritance.jpg and
> (photo2) http://ftp.purdue.edu/pub/uns/+2005/pruitt-mutant.jpg.
> 
>         PHOTO CAPTION 1: Research in Bob Pruitt's lab refutes
> inheritance laws that have been accepted for more than 100 years. Pruitt
> is a molecular geneticist in Purdue's Department of Botany and Plant
> Pathology. (Purdue Agricultural Communications photo/Tom Campbell)
> 
>         PHOTO CAPTION 2: This mutant plant has a malfunctioning gene
> that prevents its flowers from opening. Purdue University scientists
> found that 10 percent of the offspring of two such mutant plants don't
> have this malformation, but rather are like the normal grandparents.
> This chain of inheritance defies accepted scientific beliefs. (Purdue
> University photo from the laboratory of Robert Pruitt)
> 
>        -30-
> 
>  AScribe - The Public Interest Newswire / 510-653-9400 www.ascribe.org
> 
> --
> Zone 5 S Jersey USA Shade
> "oeuf tôt pique " Lover
> "Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but
> that's not why we do it."   -- Richard P. Feynman (Nobel Prize, Physics)

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