Wednesday, April 1, 2015

DNA Sequences Reveal Insight on Redwoods



     Coast redwoods are the tallest trees in the world.  However, they also have another magnificent trait, they can sprout from fallen logs, roots and even sprouting from cut stumps.  Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley are uncovering information about patterns of coast redwood clones with a new DNA analysis method. This new method could help forest management and preservation efforts.  The new method will let scientists identify clonal lineages and study how clonal diversity varies throughout the range of species.  Coast redwoods are among the oldest living trees on earth and very little research has been done with the clonal patterns of the coast redwoods.  This is somewhat due to the fact that they are hexaploid, or they have six copies of each homologous chromosome instead of two.
     Lakshmi Narayan, the grad student who is leading the UC Berkeley study says that in addition to the hexaploid condition they also have another challenge that the genotypic identity of clonal plants could possibly cause somatic mutations.  Narayan has designed a new protocol to overcome challenges associated with mutations and the high genetic copy number in the redwood DNA.  Narayan and her team collected DNA from 770 redwoods and have identified about 449 distinct clones.  The key to this new method is the use of short repeating DNA sequences.  The short DNA sequences, known as microsatellites, are present in all living organisms and widely used to distinguish individuals from one another.
     Hopefully this new method will shed light on other species which are still under investigation.  The new method of studying the short DNA sequences might give researchers a better understanding of the redwoods which are such old plants.  We could potentially study how they live so long giving us a better understanding on preserving other species.

Original Article

1 comment:

  1. Redwoods are such an interesting tree to begin with, but this just makes them seem even more important and cool. I never knew that they could grow from fallen logs and things like that. It just goes to show that organisms have some pretty creative mechanisms to help them survive. It is also astounding to think that they are using a new type of DNA analysis in order to study these trees. I hope that in the future they can do more research on the redwoods as well as research on different organisms that are similar to the redwoods in this aspect.

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