#chloroplast
Scientists solve plant sperm puzzle
Chloroplasts are where plant cells perform photosynthesis and wheat, like many other plants, inherits chloroplasts only from the mother through small precursors called plastids.
But how this happened was unknown – why didn’t the male’s chloroplast DNA travel with the rest in sperm?
By tagging plastids in wheat with a protein that glowed green scientists at Rothamsted Research and the University of Manchester could watch them in developing pollen grains. They saw for the first time that plastids are degraded in sperm cells just before fertilisation, meaning only plastids from the mother plant are inherited by the offspring.
In the image above the top line shows the protein attached to the plastids in wheat pollen, in the bottom row it is untargeted.
The finding could be used to help breed better strains of wheat, one of the world’s most important and valuable crops.
Image: Huw Jones, Rothamsted Research
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Iridescent Leaves Take Advantage Of Quantum Mechanics To Thrive In The Shade
I came across more photos of those iridescent Begonias and was reminded to look up why they evolved to be that way! It looks like it’s the result of low light adaptations.
Iridescent flowers are common in nature. Their sparkly petals attract bees’ attention, tempting them to come over and pollinate the flower. But why would leaves be iridescent? This is the question Heather Whitney, a plant scientist at University of Bristol, asked while studying iridescent flowers.
“This seemed very odd to me,” Whitney told Popular Science. “By and large you do not want to attract insects (herbivores) to leaves.” Furthermore, she noticed that these iridescent leaves were always found in shade plants. This seemed counterintuitive since one would expect plants growing in the shade to scavenge every available bit of light. Iridescence reflects some light away, though.
Plants in the Begonia genus, whose iridescent leaves make them favorites among houseplant lovers, thrive in low light. A paper published today in Nature Plants suggests that the dazzling iridescence displayed by some Begonia species may actually be their way of enhancing photosynthesis in deep shade.
Plant cells and chloroplasts of a spikemoss.
