2024-08-01 18:00:00
If we think of thorns, it is very likely that the rose comes to mind as a paradigmatic plant. ‘Every rose has its thorn’, which Poison sings in his legendary song. However, this species is not a predator of the natural “weapon” that is most important to protect itself against herbivorous animals. Because spines are numerous and independent in all the plant kingdom, and we also find them in different plants like Eggplants (located on the leaves, stem and calyx of the fruit, the green part that cover) or even in rice and barley cultivation (the part of the ear that makes them stick to your clothes is, in theory, a thorn).
And although everyone knows what they are – and we have certainly all ‘suffered’ from their lives – Science is still not entirely clear why this symbol appears so often in species, a priori, so distantly related. Now, an international study in which researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) participated sheds light on this ‘thorn’ issue: behind this trait there is a gene that they all share, even after millions of years of evolutionary isolation. . The results have just been published in the journal ‘Knowledge‘.
From eggplant to roses
It all starts, naturally, with Eggplant. The SOLbreeding group of the Institute for Conservation and Improvement of Valencian Agrodiversity (COMAV) of the UPV headed by Jaime Prohens has been researching its genetic improvement for years. “For the modern varieties we love, they don’t have thorns. This makes it easy to grow and harvest, apart from giving other benefits such as not stabbing themselves in the box and creating wounds that increase their litter to,” he explained to ABC Prohens. .
‘Diving’ through Eggplant DNA, they found a family of genes called Lonely Guy (LOG), responsible for the production of hormones that cause cell division and expansion. In an online presentation, Prohens contacted researcher Zachary Lippman, from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). He, along with his specialist James Satterlee, is researching nightshades, a category that includes tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant. “I noticed that many nights have prominent thorns. So I asked myself: ‘What do we know about that? What is going on with this adaptation? It turns out we don’t know anything,” Lippman said in a statement.
Now, the two groups started to research more types of Eggplant, such as African Eggplant or Wild Eggplant, some of them with many thorns. They found that when they saw a change in a gene that belongs to the LOG family, then they did not have thorns, while all those who had thorns had the same gene. So, the team thought of trying to surpass the crop. Gloria Villanueva Párraga, a researcher at UPV said “I was staying at the CSHL when they proposed the Roses effort. At first it seemed crazy to me. But then I realized that everything made sense and fit together.
Indeed, when one of the collaborating groups managed to kill the corresponding gene in roses, they obtained roses without thorns. And the same thing happened with jujube, a very popular plant in the Levant and Morocco, belonging to the same family. It did not stop there and the group expanded with French, English and German researchers. David Alonso Martín, who is also a researcher at the UPV said: “It became a large group, with the collaboration of many different organizations.”
So, they worked with the New York Botanical Garden to examine specimens with and without spines. Collaborators at Cornell University used genetic modification to remove thorns from desert grapes, a fruit harvested by Australia’s aborigines that, when dried, turns into a sweet grape. abundant. In total, the group is associated with vertebrates with genes related to LOG in about 20 species.
“This is a case of convergent evolution: the gene shared by the father of all these plants 165 years ago is parallel in different varieties towards the same characteristic, of having thorns,” summarizes Prohens. “It is similar to what happens with communication in bats and whales: both are independent towards the same unit. And this is something that rarely happens in nature.
Spare parts
Beyond knowing how this device exists, this work has direct applications. “This study is important because many model plants do not have model species, although it has been studied, it has been observed as well as others that have not been observed as others, it has been observed as others, it has noted that Pietro. Girazio, the researcher “Knowing the process behind the spine is not only interesting at the scientific level, but also has implications at the economic level.”
Therefore, it opens the door for plants to improve with gene editing techniques such as CRISPR (the so-called gene-glue that achieves more well-directed genetic developments). “For example, now the plants of desert grapes, wild species related to Eggplant that need a lot of water for its growth, it is not possible because they have many thorns. But if we manage to remove them, they open the door to a new crop that is in a situation where climate change can be very interesting,” said Prohens.
This research is based on plants that have thorns that arise from the epidermis of the plants. “But you can discover whether the same genes affect other plants whose thorns come out of what will be branches, such as canes; or cacti, whose leaves are those that have become spikes,” the author “We still have to discover other species, but also know what exactly this gene does and how the ‘hair’ on the plant becomes a thorn.” And maybe, if the roses created by this group become famous, Poison should update their music.
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