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Scientists Measure How Quickly Plant Genes Mutate
eldavojohn writes "A recent study puts observed numbers on genome mutations in plants. This kind of research is becoming more popular in understanding evolution. The research 'followed all genetic changes in five lines of the mustard relative Arabidopsis thaliana that occurred during 30 generations. In the genome of the final generation they then searched for differences to the genome of the original ancestor.' A single generation has about a one in 140 million chance of mutating any letter of the genome (which has about 120 million base pairs). Sound like bad odds? From the article, 'if one starts to consider that they occur in the genomes of every member of a species, it becomes clear how fluid the genome is: In a collection of only 60 million Arabidopsis plants, each letter in the genome is changed, on average, once. For an organism that produces thousands of seeds in each generation, 60 million is not such a big number at all.' The academic paper is available in Science, though seeing more than the abstract requires a subscription."
Plants don't evolve, they get changed by the touch of his noodly appendages
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
The academic paper is available in Science, though seeing more than the abstract requires a subscription
I thought this was "news for nerds, stuff that matters", not "Science magazine touting for subscriptions".
If we can't even RTFA without paying first, then it has no place on this site IMHO, as we have all come to realize that TFS is at best "a summary", and at worst, complete BS.
Modded as informative. I'm amused. Only on Slashdot.
The stories posted by eldavojohn lately make me want to stop reading /. until eldavojohn returns to school and/or goes back to packing groceries.
Oh great. Now the greenies are going to start claiming that each variant is a new species and that we have to drop everything to save them. On the other hand, the eco-diversity crowd should be pleased by this.
it was a good article, so shut your face. don't get a subscription, no one gives a damn, the dude doesn't work for the mag he is just informing you that you can't view the whole thing. lay off.
Slashdot posts news stories about hardware that you can't get your hands on without paying for it. It posts reviews of books that you can't read without paying for them (short of going to a library). Why should it be any different for a scientific journal that happens to have an online edition? The news is the discovery. The article happens to contain more information about the methods, data, and the findings. So what if it costs money to read it? Isn't supporting the scientific community worth something?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
With four different DNA letters, there are six possible changes . . .
Can anyone explain this? Are they saying that a change from, say, for example, T to A is the same as a change from A to T? Are they just wrong? Or is there some good explanation that eludes me?
For those that don't know much about either the significance of the science or the technology involved with generating the data, this might be useful. One big gray area in our understanding of evolution is how quickly genomes are changing, where they change, and the types of changes that are occurring. Yes, a genome is usually made up from DNA (RNA viruses being the major exception), and encoded in the DNA are genes, many of which get translated into proteins that do much of the "work" in an organism. However, depending on the organism, much of the DNA does not code for genes. The human genome for example is ~3,100,000,000 nucleotides (DNA's building blocks) long. Of that, ~1.5 percent codes for protein. Of the rest, the vast majority are ancient, dead, "selfish" chunks of DNA such as retroviruses (RNA viruses that convert to DNA and integrate into a genome. HIV is an example of one of these guys) and transposons (a major class of which are just like retroviruses but lack the genes for cell-to-cell transfer). Periodically in the evolution of many multicellular organisms (e.g. plants and animals), there are explosions or blooms of these types of elements that suddenly take off and integrate around a genome. This is one type of mutation (or genome evolution), and there are many others. Single nucleotides can change (e.g. C->T, as discussed in the paper), individual genes can get duplicated through a process known as unequal crossing-over or nonhomologous recombination, and the entire genome can be duplicated (known as polyploidy and is a dominant feature in flowering plant genome evolution.)
Our current understanding of how dynamic a genome is, the types of changes that occur, and the factors that limit these changes is very limited. Much of this is because getting a genome of an organism can be expensive and laborious, depending on the size of the genome (RNA virus 15,000 nt, DNA virus: 150,000 nt, bacteria: 5,000,000 nt, yeast: 20,000,000 nt, multicellular organisms: 100,000,000-10,000,000,000). Since our understanding of how genomes evolve depend on getting genomes sequenced that are appropriately related to one another (e.g. populations of organisms versus diversity of organisms), we can only get answers for those genomes we currently have (current ~8000 for all viruses, bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes). Fortunately, there is currently a major technological revolution happening in biology: generating DNA sequences fast and cheap. For example, the first human genome was approx a 10 year project and cost ~$1,000,000,000. Now, the record for a human genome takes less than a week and costs ~$15,000.
This project is a major milestone as the authors sequenced 6 plant genomes (a mustard known as Arabidopsis thaliana) that are related to one another by 30 generations. Because of the close evolutionary relationships of these organisms, the authors can characterize the types of genomic change happening over very short time periods.
The emerging picture is that genomes, the fundamental genetic blueprint for a lineage of organisms, are much more dynamic than we had previously thought.
Given the choice, all scientists would probably publish their research freely; it's actually pretty common practice in physics and maths. However, in other fields -- including biology -- this isn't realistically possible.
A scientist's career and a department's funding are entirely dependent on their reputation, which is almost completely dependant on getting your work published in high profile (a.k.a "high impact factor") journals. In order for these journals to accept amd publish your work, you have to sign over copyright to the publishing company, and agree that you won't distribute the article for free.Scientists get completely shafted in this system: We raise money, do the work, write the article, sign over copyright to the publisher then pay for the privilige of them selling our work for their own profit. Then we're contractually forbidden from passing on copies of our work to interested colleagues (or potential employers, etc), much less the wider world.
There are some exceptions to this. In the UK, certain funding bodies and research charities insist that all work funded by their money must be made freely available, either at time of publication or, more commonly, after a delay of half a year or more. In the USA, work funded by the NIH must be made freely available. This is still generally restricted to the researcher's own version of the paper (i.e. without the journal's professional typesetting), but at least the information gets out.
Scientists hate this system, but an individual scientist simply doesn't have the bargaining power. You want to negotiate with a journal? They'll simply refuse your paper and run one of the tens or hundreds of others competing for your spot. Want to make a principled stand and only submit to open-access journals? You can, but you can basically kiss your career and funding prospects goodbye. So it's simple pragmitism: not many people are willing to risk throwing their careers away in the fight to let non-professionals (and a huge number of cranks, if you've ever read the Nature comments boards) read their article for free.
Has the DNA Sequencing been done on his E. Coli?
If so, What was found?
If not, when do we expect it?