Re: Noble prize at last?

Ben:

>First Joe Halinar "promised" me the Noble prize for showing mitotic 
>recombination in any plant

I didn't personally promise you the Nobel Prize, but I did say that IF 
you proved that mitotic recombination was as common in hostas as you 
claim it to be that you had a very good chance of winning a Nobel 
Prize.

Now, Ben, you CLAIM to be a geneticist.  I would think you would know 
that if you want to prove mitotic recombination that you have to do 
genetic analysis of the resulting cells.  IF mitotic recombination is 
the cause of green edges on yellow leaves as you claim, it would 
actually be rather easy in hostas to prove it.  You have all the 
equipment to do it.  I'm willing to bet that some of the people on 
this robin might even be able to figure it out eventhough they don't 
have a genetics background.  The answer to how to do this is in your 
Rules for Hosta Sports.  Now, I'm NOT going to tell you how to do it 
because I already have some of the material available to do it.  
However, I do need more material as the material I have available 
right now isn't the most fertile.  I'm amazed that you haven't figure 
out how to do the relatively simple experiment to prove or at least 
greatly support your theory that mitotic recombination causes green 
edges on yellow leaves.  But then, the experiment may prove you wrong!

>I did provide the literature to show that it was described already 25 
>years ago

First, describing mitotic recombination isn't the same as proving 
mitotic recombination!  Yes, we do know that there is SOME evidence 
for mitotic recombination in plants, but to the best of my knowledge 
it has only been proven in one or maybe two cases, and those were 
highly contrived experiments.  All the other references to mitotic 
recombination only suggest mitotic recombination as a POSSIBLE 
explination, not that it absolutely was the cause of the observations. 
If you plan to write an article to refute the findings that we have 
come to so far, you better be prepared to actually document that 
mitotic recombination has been shown to be common in higher plants 
under normal conditions - ie., not highly artifical conditions using 
high levels of radiation, and NOT using someone elses personal opinion 
that they think it is commom or not uncommon.  I'm more then willing 
to bet that you misrepresented what Marcotrigiano wrote to you regards 
mitotic recombination.

>Suddenly mister Halinar writes he know all along that mit rec was 
>there in plants

Now, Ben, IF we are going to get formal, it's DOCTOR, not MISTER - PhD 
University of Wisconsin - Madison, Plant Breeding and Genetics, 1978. 
I believe you are familar with UW from one of the yeast genetics 
articles I saw of yours.  My PhD thesis was on Mendelian inheritance 
of certain traits in carrots, mainly carotene and anthocyanidin 
pigments in roots.

Now, Ben, NO one has ever said that mitotic recombination NEVER 
occured in plants.  There is some evidence suggesting that mitotic 
recombination might be a possible cause of certain observed results, 
but the authors also report that other possibilities may also be the 
cause.  

I still don't know if you consider the "Y" yellow leaf gene to be part 
of the chlorophyll synthesis pathway or not.  I'm really amazed with 
all the research equipment you supposely have at your disposal that 
you haven't done some rather simple experiments to actually prove the 
claims you make.  I'm willing to bet that you already have all the 
material you need to actually prove, or more likely disprove, mitotic 
recombination for causing green edges on yellow leaves, and some 
rather simple spectrometric measurments on the seedlings from Yy x yy 
crosses would provide a lot of information about the nature of the "Y" 
allele.  If you want me to provide the basic design for this 
experiment I will be more then willing to help you set it up as I 
don't have the equipment to do it.  Actually, this would be a nice 
experiment for an advanced undergraduate student to do.

Joe Halinar

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