

Flesh-Eating Plant Cleaned Junk From Its Minimalist Genome - kens
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/12/flesh-eating-plant-cleaned-junk-minimalist-genome/

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lmm
>And since DNA’s backbone is loaded with phosphorus, it’s reasonable to think
that the plant would have evolved to have less DNA, so it can make do with
less of this element.

>But not so. Instead, the team thinks that the answer probably involves
recombination[...] Perhaps recombination is exceptionally sloppy in the
bladderwort, leading to a natural tendency to delete its DNA.

Why is this presented as an alternative? Surely it makes sense that the low-
phosphorus environment would lead the bladderwort to evolve a "sloppy
recombination mechanism", that would shorten its DNA without damaging its
function.

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transphenomenal
Looking up weights and DNA structures and such things in humans in wiki
articles, I have calculated that 0.5% - 2% of the phosphorus in the human body
is used in DNA. It seems reasonable to me that it would be at least within an
order of magnitude of 1% in plants as well.

For this reason I doubt the phosphorus in DNA would make a significant
contribution to evolving a shorter DNA sequence.

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kens
The original paper is at
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12132.html)

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Jun8
This plant is more interesting and bizarre than any sci-fi writer's
imagination, the Wikipedia description is fascinating but also gave me the
shivers: "Lloyd devoted several studies to the possibility, often recounted
but never previously accounted for under scientific conditions, that
Utricularia can consume larger prey such as young tadpoles and mosquito larvae
by catching them by the tail, and ingesting them bit by bit."

Think of a mutant variety of this plant with 1m bladders: it can trap a
swimmer and ingest them over the course of a few days! I wonder if there's a
theoretical limit to how big they can get.

~~~
lsh
> This plant is more interesting and bizarre than any sci-fi writer's
> imagination

Eh, not quite: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids>

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maratd
I disagree. The amount of DNA you have will affect the rate of mutation.
Mutations are mostly a bad thing, however, in an environment where a species
must constantly create defenses against parasites or disease, it's important
to mutate new defenses. As a result, in a low disease/parasite environment it
makes sense to get rid of "junk dna" to reduce the rate of mutation, while in
a high disease/parasite environment it makes sense to increase "junk dna" to
increase it.

Red Queen is a good read on this topic.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis>

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Red-Queen-Evolution-
Nature/dp/0060...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Red-Queen-Evolution-
Nature/dp/0060556579)

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dizzystar
Isn't it a little too premature to be stating that such item does nothing just
because we don't know what it does? I feel like this should be stated with
caution after the mislabeling of the tonsils, pineal gland, and thymus as
vestigial.

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Gravityloss
Ed Yong has long been one of the best science writers around.

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fooyc
DNA is bytecode for some VM, and the junk is uninitialized HEAP. Maybe.

