Re: RE:Hyb: Cytoplasmic inheritence was disease resistance {Walter]

That peanut phenomenon is intriguing, Walter.  I haven't the foggiest of how
it might be explained either.

All those extra-nuclear structures are derived only from the mother.  If some
effect disappears over a couple of generations, you are quite right in saying
it cannot be because of some condition in the mitochondria or other
structures, as they have a relatively slow and fairly constant rate of
mutation.  Three generations wouldn't be likely to show much of any of those
effects, which usually are so subtle as to defy detection without DNA
analysis.

If you ever hear of a likely explanation, I'd be interested to know about it.

One might ask, "What have peanuts to do with irises?"--but I would
answer--most all biological processes are carried out in almost exactly the
same way in phyla and genera widely separated--all the way from legumes to
irids--and a long way on each side of either.

Anthocyanin production in potatoes, tobacco or tomato leaves is in response to
UV radiation, and protects the rather delicate DNA in the cell from UV
light--which has enough energy to break DNA bonds.

Irises produce anthocyanins in the leaves too--but especially in the flowers.
This appears to be a response to a parallel and reciprocal (a pair of evolving
events that have a feed-back loop between them) development in insect color
vision and flower color.  Anthocyanin pigments attract insects and insects
pollenate those flowers.  Around and around the process proceeds.

The chemical chain of events all the way from Acetic Acid to Delphinidin (or
whatever anthocyanins are produced) is exactly the same in Tomato leaves as it
in flowers with the same pigment.  The biologists refer to this kind of
parallelism as "the process is conserved across phyla" or whatever the range
may be.  There's only one way to make soup, and every household uses the same
recipe.

Neil Mogensen   z  7  western NC mountains

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