234-Year-Old Tree Has Impressively Stable Genome

Genomic analysis of an oak tree that lived during Napoleon’s time supports the idea that plants somehow avoid the accumulation of mutations in their stem cells.

a 234-year-old oak tree on the University of Lausanne campus in Switzerland has relatively few mutations.WIKIMEDIA, ABADDON1337

Update (December 4): This study was published today in Nature Plants.

Sequencing DNA collected from leaves on different branches of a 234-year-old oak tree on the University of Lausanne campus in Switzerland, plant biologist Philippe Reymond and colleagues found far fewer single base-pair substitutions than expected based on known plant mutations rates and the number of cell divisions that presumed to have occurred between an old branch near the tree’s base and a younger branch 40 meters higher up. The team, which did not analyze other types of genetic mutations such as deletions, published its results last week (June 13) on the preprint server bioRxiv.

“It’s a tantalizing study,” Daniel Schoen, a plant evolutionary biologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, tells Nature. “It touches on something that was simmering always, in the back of the minds of plant biologists.”

Specifically, the findings support the idea that plants somehow protect their stem cells from accumulating mutations. Last year, for example, scientists from the University of Bern found evidence in Arabidopsis thaliana and tomato that plants limit the number of cell divisions in the meristem tissues that house the stem cells that support plant growth. “Plants seem to set aside some cells in such a way as to minimize the number of mutations they accumulate,” Rob Lanfear of Macquarie University in Australia wrote in an email to The Scientist following the study’s publication.

Comments

The Secret Science 02:The 30 Most Disturbing Human Experiments in History

Disturbing human experiments aren’t something the average person thinks too much about. Rather, the progress achieved in the last 150 years of human history is an accomplishment we’re reminded of almost daily. Achievements made in fields like biomedicine and psychology mean that we no longer need to worry about things like deadly diseases or masturbation as a form of insanity. For better or worse, we have developed more effective ways to gather information, treat skin abnormalities, and even kill each other. But what we are not constantly reminded of are the human lives that have been damaged or lost in the name of this progress. The following is a list of the 30 most disturbing human experiments in history. 30. The Tearoom Sex Study Sociologist Laud Humphreys often wondered about the men who commit impersonal sexual acts with one another in public restrooms. He wondered why “tearoom sex” — fellatio in public restrooms — led to the majority of homosexual arrests in ...

The Strange and Stranger Case of Wyndham Lathem

A Northwestern University plague researcher has been charged with a brutal murder. Here’s what we know about him. WIKIMEDIA, TONY WEBSTER O n July 27, The Chicago Tribune reported that there was an arrest warrant issued for Wyndham Lathem , a microbiologist at Northwestern University. The crime Lathem would later be charged with was brutal—26-year-old Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, whose body was found in Lathem’s apartment, had been stabbed dozens of times. But Lathem was nowhere to be found. As events unfolded over the following days, it became clear he had fled from Chicago to California with a second suspect, 56-year-old Andrew Warren, a University of Oxford employee from the United Kingdom visiting the states. Along the way, the two men apparently made an anonymous $1,000 donation in Cornell-Duranleau’s name to the Lake Geneva Public Library and another donation for $5,610 to a Chicago health center. Lathem had also sent a video to fa...

Popular painkiller doesn’t have more heart risks than others, study claims

NEW ORLEANS — A long-awaited study on painkillers called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, the most widely prescribed class of drugs in the world, has concluded that the three most commonly used carry a similar risk of cardiovascular complications. Yet critics say the study was too flawed to fairly compare them. Concerns about a type of NSAID called COX-2 inhibitors peaked in 2004 when the drug Vioxx was withdrawn from the market — a decision steeped in scandal because manufacturer Merck & Co had initially hidden data that would reveal the drug’s cardiovascular risks. A second COX-2 inhibitor, Pfizer Inc.’s Celebrex, was allowed to remain on the market with the condition that Pfizer conduct a study to prove that Celebrex was no worse than two older NSAIDs, naproxen and ibuprofen. The study lasted 10 years and enrolled more than 24,000 patients, but faced challenges. Doctors in European Union countries would not participate because they were worried a...

The Research

Search This Blog