A new study shows that an unassuming plant has some very unusual family dynamics.
It has three sets of chromosomes and coexists with its ancestral plant, which has either one or two sets of chromosomes. Perhaps all three variants coexist, the article is unclear (or I have morning brain). Scientists previously thought organisms with multiple sets of chromosomes (polyploid organisms) could not exist long term, and when that theory was disproved, they thought polyploid organisms would compete with their progenitor species for resources and one would edge the other out.
It’s an interesting phenomenon wrapped in an article so full of writing errors and freshman college-essay blunders that I could barely understand their point.
If I hadn’t done my own undergrad thesis on ploidy in plants, it would have been nearly incomprehensible.
Yay for the subject! Boo for the source.
Weird article. It begins with a brief paragraph of the question of how life started and amino acids, but then goes on to talk about speciation and polyploidy. In the end, nothing is resolved and you are send to read somewhere else. With a basic (modern) understanding of polyploidy, nothing new is told here…
