this article is another that i found in the science category, primarily about genomes as the one i posted last week was about social behaviors that were determined by gene sequences. in the plant Arabidopsis, its genome allows the plant to resist environmental infections. the most interesting part about this article is that, much like us, plants have a "biological clock." certain envioronmental cues trigger a response to the plant to react. in this particular case, "The timing corresponds with the formation of spores in a funguslike pathogen that attacks the plant and results in a condition known as downy mildew disease. The disease weakens the plant and forms an unsavory coating of fuzzy mildew." research like this can offer a wide variety of medical advancements such as new vaccines and medical treatments in the near future. my only question is, how can a plants DNA be applied to animal DNA? curious... quite curious...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08obplant.html?ref=science
How can plant DNA be applied to animal DNA? I'm sorry but you must've misunderstood the purpose of the article.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Xinnian Dong, "the pathogen forms spores at night and disseminates them at dawn, so that's when the infection threat is highest." This is evidence that the circadian clock relation to pathogen resistance is of natural selection. Obviously a plant that suffers infection is least likely to live. The plants that had a mechanism to help protect during times of high infection threat were more likely to live. Slowly as time goes on, this is known as evolution.
The functional connection between the circadian clock and pathogenic resistance is nothing more than effect versus timing. At certain times of the day you could be more likely to catch a cold or a fever. Determining these times and adminstering a medication would be the practical application of this research not combining plant DNA with animal DNA. Besides the DNA in the plants would code for protection against downy mildew disease. Is that even a problem in humans?