X-Message-Number: 25871
From: "Basie" <>
Subject: Say goodbye to Mendel
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 18:09:33 -0500

Maybe we will be able to say goodbye to the theories about memories as well 
one day.

Basie

Startling Scientists, Plant Fixes Its Flawed Gene
By NICHOLAS WADE


Published: March 23, 2005


In a startling discovery, geneticists at Purdue University say they have 
found plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene inherited 
from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the right version 
had been made in the grandparents' generation or earlier.

The finding implies that some organisms may contain a cryptic backup copy of 
their genome that bypasses the usual mechanisms of heredity. If confirmed, 
it would represent an unprecedented exception to the laws of inheritance 
discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. Equally surprising, the 
cryptic genome appears not to be made of DNA, the standard hereditary 
material.

The discovery also raises interesting biological questions - including 
whether it gets in the way of evolution, which depends on mutations changing 
an organism rather than being put right by a backup system.

"It looks like a marvelous discovery," said Dr. Elliott Meyerowitz, a plant 
geneticist at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. David Haig, an 
evolutionary biologist at Harvard, described the finding as "a really 
strange and unexpected result," which would be important if the observation 
holds up and applies widely in nature.

The rest is at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/science/23gene.html?th&emc=th

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