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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.
As far as wilful misinterpretation goes, you have to worry a lot more about the creationists on this one than the "greenies." It doesn't really affect the environmentalist viewpoint in any meaningful way, but it requires the more sophisticated creationists to move the goalposts again to maintain the artificial "microevolution/macroevolution" dichotomy they're so enamored of.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Genetic diversity is useful, as it make it much harder for a single pathogen to wipe out a population in a short space of time.
As for the rest, nobody is going to claim that each individual is a species. You've constructed a rather unconvincing straw man to hijack an interesting article, because you have a problem with some imaginary "greenies".
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
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.
Mod this up to 10. This is important because plant genomes have been the source of some stupendously unexpected discoveries indicating that DNA is extremely plastic, and manages to squeeze into available ecosphere niches with ease -- resulting in closely related genomes that express forms as divergent as pineapples and plane trees. Linnaean classification schemes based on morphology therefore disconnect from reality and become first approximation maps. When the morphologies in question are fossils, the peril in drawing conclusions from shapes alone throws decades of curatorship into doubt. The greater implication is, that evolution is not only reasonable and easy but dirt cheap. The probability that life exists on other planets, in the galaxy if not the solar system, becomes a near certainty.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_