On a similar note to egg colours, why is it that plants of the same species have different coloured stems and leaves? I am growing beans, some plants are light green others are dark. Why?

Baloo55th

Can be due to various factors. Light availability can cause differences - paleness indicating lack of light. Available nutrients can also have effects like this. And apart from these factors, are your beans from one pure strain genetically? Remember Mendel and the tall and short, wrinkled and unwrinkled? If your beans come from a hybrid stock, there are very likely to be differences as some characteristics that are recessive (masked in the parent) come to the fore when recessive gene is inherited from both parents. (Yes, I know this is a simplification of Mendel, and that he cheated anyway.) Apr 06 05, 7:10 AM

TheAlphaWolf

could be genetic variation- the key thing in evolution. Mendel cheated? I know that they just discovered that some plants can "choose" their genes (probably from other genes otherwise we would be able to choose our own genes too) but how did he cheat? Apr 06 05, 5:58 PM

kaylofgorons

I'd like to know how he cheated, too. Do you mean by covering them and selectively breeding them? They've recently discovered that Arabidopsis thaliana can repair mutations that are homozygous recessive and become heterozygous normal again by altering the DNA base sequence on one of the homologous recessive genes, apparently without using DNA as a template. It not only fixes mutations in important stuff, but some in junk DNA, too. It takes one or two generations to kick in, or something like that. I've only read a summary, but this was the article information: Lolle, S.J., Victor, J.L., Young, J.M. and Pruitt, R.E., "Genome-wide non-mendelian inheritance of extra-genomic information in Arabidopsis", *Nature* 434:505–509, 2005. Apr 06 05, 6:30 PM

TheAlphaWolf

how can it fix junk DNA if it's junk? Apr 06 05, 7:09 PM

kaylofgorons

It alters the DNA considered junk. O_o Don't ask me; ask the plant. Maybe the plant doesn't think it's junk. It's not important what I think or the scientists think. I'm working with the facts here. I'm sorry if I gave the idea that it was returning to a known function by changing junk DNA. Obviously, if the DNA had a known function, we wouldn't be calling it junk. For some reason the reaction returns junk DNA to "normal" form while it's returning mutations of important DNA to "normal" form. Scientists will have to keep "asking" the plant to find out why. Apr 06 05, 8:07 PM

Baloo55th

He cheated in his results. They shouldn't have been as perfect as they were number-wise in the ratios of pure dom - mixed - pure recess. The principle works, but his samples were far too small to give the accuracy he claimed to have. Apr 07 05, 4:37 PM

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