[HN Gopher] First known gene transfer from plant to insect ident...
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First known gene transfer from plant to insect identified
Author : hheikinh
Score : 183 points
Date : 2021-03-27 06:02 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| minikites wrote:
| I remember the "Carniferns" from SimEarth and the idea of a
| plant/animal hybrid is very appealing. I can imagine a distant
| future where a durable engineered hybrid could be put to use for
| terraforming.
| 60654 wrote:
| Now I'm remembering dropping monoliths all over the place and
| ending up with hyper intelligent mollusks and carnivorous
| plants. That game was wild. :)
| morsch wrote:
| It was. Still is, I guess. Has there been anything like it,
| since?
| MayeulC wrote:
| Spore comes to mind.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Makes me think if all those insets that mimic plants are really
| just a matter of adaption and evolution or they got some plant
| genes.
| [deleted]
| throwaway1107 wrote:
| There is an interesting curated list of HGT examples at
| https://www.panspermia.org/whatsnew103.htm
| The_rationalist wrote:
| I can't find it back but there was a blog post explaining that
| earth plants could have been red instead of just green. Do you
| imagine red forests?? And this is not science fiction at all,
| brown and red photosynthesis can be as efficient hence why it is
| very common underwater. However some contingent "choices" have
| been made at the origin of photosynthesis and no terrestrial
| plant has preserved the necessary gens and such gens cannot be
| developed back. However horizontal gene transfer might be a hope
| of seeing one day a red planet (though a human made OGMs is
| likely the best strategy)
| ironmagma wrote:
| At last, some recognition that evolution is not just random trial
| and error.
| dqpb wrote:
| Even if you look only at random genetic mutations, these are
| being inserted into an incomprehensibly large dynamical system
| with its own selective pressures. It's a distributed
| computation at such a massive scale, you would never have any
| hope of fully stimulating or predicting its outcome. So I'm not
| sure what you mean by "just random trial and error".
| ironmagma wrote:
| We don't really have a good definition of random to start,
| but we can say things are more or less random than other
| things. When people say evolution is entirely due to "random
| mutations," I would argue that's misleading, because it's
| less random than arbitrary bit flips. If an entire chunk of a
| gene from an already-evolved organism can enter at any time,
| that in my opinion is less random than the bit flips
| hypothesis. And sure, people in this thread can say this is
| old science, but my point is around the popular understanding
| of evolution and how it is communicated to students and the
| general public. It's less random than total randomness, and
| many people completely deny it.
| echelon wrote:
| How is this not random?
|
| The viral genes we have in our genome were acquired by chance.
|
| This was a fluke that got amplified.
| lolthishuman wrote:
| Because it's selected for, at least recursively based on
| entity specific attractors. In this case bacteria, another
| case mating preference.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| I would read the article as if the transfer was a a random
| event, :
|
| _But how the whitefly managed to swipe a plant gene is
| unclear. One possibility, says Turlings, is that a virus served
| as an intermediate, shuttling genetic material from a plant
| into the whitefly genome._
| ironmagma wrote:
| Right, but there's a difference between random events causing
| biological changes vs. random mutations having to happen
| during reproduction/birth and proved out in the form of
| natural selection.
| shakow wrote:
| > there's a difference between random events causing
| biological changes vs. random mutations having to happen
| during reproduction/birth
|
| From an evolutionary perspective, there are none. Both are
| but sources of variation (the actual cause does not matter)
| in the genome; which, depending on their impact, may or may
| not get fixated by natural selection.
| flobosg wrote:
| Not sure what you meant with that. This gene transfer event
| is a mutation and as such is also being subject to natural
| selection.
| yes_man wrote:
| From evolutionary point of view it is semantical why genome
| changed. Also I've never heard of any biology textbook or
| journal claiming mutations would only happen during
| reproduction or birth. Mutations happen all the time,
| that's one reason we have diseases like cancer. Your
| reproductive cells can mutate any time throughout your life
| passing out differences to offspring. There is also genetic
| recombination bringing out traits that didn't exist, or
| suppressing ones that do.
| ironmagma wrote:
| It's hardly semantics. Many people over the past few
| hundred years have found it mind-bogglingly unlikely that
| organisms can evolve to be so purpose-built to survive in
| their environments if the only input driving that forward
| is the circumstances of their birth and the sheer number
| of organisms being produced. This study suggests that's
| not the only way these genetic changes happen, which
| makes the premise of evolution much less unlikely.
| flobosg wrote:
| The structural mutation described in the study likely
| happened as "circumstances of their birth": a gene
| insertion in the germline genome.
|
| > This study suggests that's not the only way these
| genetic changes happen
|
| The study says nothing about the transfer mechanism, only
| that it took place.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Only mutations in sperm or egg can be passed on, so those
| are mainly the ones relevant to evolution.
| gpvos wrote:
| The mutation is as random as any other kind, it's just a
| different mechanism.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Hence why I never said it wasn't random, specifically
| that it's not the random trial and error of genetic
| mutations at birth.
| tomrod wrote:
| Can't be trial and error. There is no guide. Thus there is no
| trial.
|
| There is simply natural events or circumstance incidentally
| causing the death of individuals in environments for which they
| are unsuited before reproduction.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Trial is defined as "a test of the performance, qualities, or
| suitability of someone or something." An organism's life is
| definitely a test of its ability to survive; a flower seed
| being buried in a shady spot is thus a trial. There is no
| need for a guide.
| tomrod wrote:
| No one is testing, however. Folks commonly use verbiage
| derived from intellectual design, and we should be
| conscientious on the subject. There is a system in the
| randomness, but we need not attribute will to the system.
| ironmagma wrote:
| There need not be a tester for a test to exist. The
| organism tests itself in some sense. The system
| (universe) tests the organism, the same way things can
| stand the "test of time." Whether you personally
| interpret this as intelligent design is entirely outside
| of the discussion.
| ralusek wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted, I understand you perfectly
| well.
|
| To clarify for others: random gene mutation within an organism
| is not the same a random gene introduction from external
| source.
|
| Take something like an Orchid Praying Mantis. If it were
| discovered that the Orchid Praying Mantis got some of its
| coloring from a gene transfer of orchid plants with which it
| cohabitated, that would remove an enormous amount of random
| mutations that needed to have occurred within its own genome to
| achieve that goal.
|
| Nobody is saying that the mantis wouldn't be subject to all of
| the same forces of natural selection thereafter, or that the
| particular gene that was transferred wasn't itself a random
| selection from the orchid. It just makes the arrival at certain
| gene configurations immeasurably more likely than they would've
| been within the same time period, given an organism's lineage
| had only had its own random mutations available.
| tum92 wrote:
| HGT is fascinating & important, but it's also completely
| accepted, recognized, and studied.
|
| Horizontal gene transfer was actually discovered before we
| had any consensus that DNA was the biological mechanism of
| heredity, and the experiments showing evidence of HGT were
| used as evidence for that claim.
| WalterBright wrote:
| We're on the cusp of a huge revolution in genetic engineering. I
| figure it's like what the computer industry was like in 1980.
|
| An awful lot of money is going to be made.
| amelius wrote:
| > I figure it's like what the computer industry was like in
| 1980.
|
| But let's skip the part where hosts are infected by engineered
| viruses.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| The alternatives are... nanites?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Nanites and viruses/cells are essentially the same thing,
| just that the latter already work, and weren't designed by
| us.
| smolder wrote:
| The latter, I think you mean.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Right! Fixed, thanks!
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Too late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxitec#Field_trials
| sradman wrote:
| The paper is pure science. I'd argue that the Life Sciences are
| entering a Scientific Revolution 2.0. We are on the cusp of
| learning how many living systems work. The scope is broader
| than genetic engineering alone, IMO. This revolution is shaping
| up to be multidisciplinary; computation will be a critical
| aspect.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Agreed and I think the manipulation of gene and rna is
| revolutionary. It might be just steps and tools. But if not
| control, do we still have human is an issue.
| dekhn wrote:
| we've been on the cusp of a huge revolution in genetic
| engineering for 20 years, and will be for at least another 20
| years. It's entirely unclear that our newest capabilities will
| make a significant difference outside of research labs.
| dnautics wrote:
| We were on the cusp 20 years ago with human genome project,
| and now things have settled down, gotten boring, and the next
| cusp is like 20-30 years from now.
|
| Honestly aside from crispr not much has changed since 10
| years ago (and I know this is sacrilege on hn but crispr is
| not that exciting outside of making some lab techiques easier
| and maybe enabling human germline editing, which it sees no
| one does).
| xipho wrote:
| I'd agree. 20 years ago comments like "we'll have the
| evolutionary tree of life (or even small clades) resolved
| in 5-10 years" were routinely tossed around. Today the
| reality of the vastness of the biodiversity, the complexity
| and limitations of the genome (homoplasy, etc.),
| limitations in compute power (it takes weeks to run single
| evolutionary reconstruction analyses), and the and
| practical inability to scale to 10s of thousands of
| organisms (things like basic project-tracking software are
| required) remain huge bottlenecks. Furthermore those
| "genomes' we have, even outside a handful of model
| organisms, are more or less raw data, not annotated,
| confused jumbles of pipe-line derived data that require
| years to fully grok, refine etc. I suspect we have decades
| to go before the collective "genomic" enterprise will be
| "fully operational".
| dnautics wrote:
| hm. I somewhat disagree. We basically have the
| evolutionary tree of life done. There are probably a few
| surprises still. 90% of stuff, it turns out, is the same.
| We don't know what causes detailed differences, (like
| what is different between a dog and a bear?) but for a
| lot of interesting tasks: "get a picture of how X gene is
| regulated", "understand how X molecule is biosynthesized"
| are basically solved, solvable, or there is a worked out
| procedure to solve it, using sequencing... The problem is
| that we don't have operators smart enough to know how to
| use these data carefully. If you are a detail-oriented
| biochemist who has a good grounding in first principles,
| you _basically_ have everything you could need out of
| genomics. However, that won 't be enough to get a faculty
| position!
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Can make new dna baby I sjouke say it is revolutionary
| something I do not like and want but still is
| revolutionary. And evolutionary if the kids grown up and
| "reproduce".
|
| And other like pig and monkey resulted from same technique.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| RNA vaccines are new, and seem to be important right now...
| dekhn wrote:
| actually, all the work to make RNA vaccines depends on
| decades of pure research into RNA biology. It's definitely
| an improvement but no revolution.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The revolution comes from applying that research, not
| doing the research. It looks to me like the pieces are in
| place for applying it now.
|
| The covid vaccines are an example.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Hopefully we will do better than just making plants resistant
| to pesticides so that we can sell more of those pesticides.
| [deleted]
| Ovah wrote:
| Making a profit from gene technology is hard. I've heard second
| hand that many famous and innovative biotech companies have
| barely been able to turn a profit, year after year.
| rodarmor wrote:
| Reading the paper, I don't understand why the authors conclude
| that horizontal gene transfer is the most likely explanation, and
| not independent evolution.
| folli wrote:
| This is based on gene sequence comparisons. The gene in
| question is closely related to its plant counterpart and
| phylogenetically distant to any other known insect genes.
|
| So the most parsimonious explanation is that the gene is
| horizontally transferred from plants to insects. The chance
| that it has evolved independently from another insect gene is
| very, very low.
| flobosg wrote:
| They assumed HGT because they couldn't find any ortholog
| phenolic glucoside malonyltransferase genes in related whitefly
| species, eliminating convergent evolution as a possible
| explanation. In addition, the phylogenetic analysis showed that
| the BtPMaT1 gene clustered with other similar plant genes.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Horizontal gene transfer occurs routinely among bacteria through
| a process called conjugation. Bacteria literally inject their
| neighbour with a chunk of DNA.
|
| This is what the molecular apparatus looks like from the surface
| membrain of a bacterium.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=ihlFqOK5cZM
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| They can also absorb DNA from their dead friends in order to
| obtain their powers. Microscopic Mega Men.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_(genetics)
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| Yes, but here it is between eukaryotic cells, which are much
| more complex than prokaryotes, isn't?
|
| And it is between cell's type that are vastly different, one
| relying on photosynthesis, the other uses cell respiration. I
| am wrong?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| You are indeed correct to point out that the article is about
| two eukaryotes which are vastly different organisms,
| separated evolutionarily from bacteria by hundreds of
| millions of years, or billions of years, depending on how you
| measure it.
|
| Similarly, humans are quite different from whiteflies,
| although the difference is put into perspective when you
| consider that we have something like 40% commonality of
| genes, depending on how you map homologues.
|
| How the plant gene got into the whitefly is a deep mystery
| that happened long ago.
|
| If we go back even further in evolutionary history, insects,
| humans and other eukaryotes are descended from prokaryotes.
| The organelles of eukaryotic cells such as the mitochondria
| of animal cells and the chloroplasts of plant cells were once
| individual prokaryotes which merged into colonies and formed
| eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis.
|
| Even today, eukaryotes live symbiotically with prokaryotes in
| a way that is impossible to disaggregate. You have as many
| prokaryotic cells living inside of your shirt and pants as
| you do eukaryotic cells, with trillions of gut bacteria
| responsible for keeping you alive by pre-processing the food
| you buy from the supermarket and restaurants into nutrients
| and amino acids that your actual body can utilise.
|
| Whiteflies also have parasitic and symbiotic commensal
| bacteria that are integral parts of their organism. Perhaps
| one of those gut bacteria, or a respiratory parasite
| transferred that plant gene millions of years ago in a freak
| occurrence. Or maybe it happens regularly and systemically.
|
| With gene sequencing only becoming widely available in the
| last decade, scientists are just beginning to isolate and
| identify examples of gene transfer like the one in this
| article.
| faitswulff wrote:
| > Even today, eukaryotes live symbiotically with
| prokaryotes in a way that is impossible to disaggregate.
|
| Don't forget mitochondria, the cellular organelles that are
| responsible for cell respiration:
|
| > Mitochondria and chloroplasts likely evolved from
| engulfed prokaryotes that once lived as independent
| organisms. At some point, a eukaryotic cell engulfed an
| aerobic prokaryote, which then formed an endosymbiotic
| relationship with the host eukaryote, gradually developing
| into a mitochondrion.
|
| https://www.nature.com/scitable/content/the-origin-of-
| mitoch...
| koeng wrote:
| They are more complex, but the cell type doesn't matter as
| much. In fact, there are bacteria that cause disease using
| HGT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrobacterium).
| Modification of those bacteria is how you get low-cost plant
| genetic engineering.
| mannerheim wrote:
| There are many cases of horizontal gene transfer involving
| eukaryotic cells, although usually the donor would be a
| prokaryotic cell or a virus.
|
| The bacterial residents of mealybug have lost the ability to
| make crucial proteins, and instead rely on the mealybug to
| produce them. It never had those genes in the first place,
| obtaining them instead through HGT. It's thus posited that
| eukaryotic organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts
| transferred genes to their hosts as well.[0]
|
| [0]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/cell-bacteria-mergers-
| offer-c...
| otoburb wrote:
| That video was awesome. Reminded me of a cell-based version of
| the game Factorio.
| Teever wrote:
| It reminded me of this marvellous machine that was designed
| by Konrad Zuse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odwgpKRnWM8
| tr3ndyBEAR wrote:
| HGT is also common amongst soil fungi between bacteria and
| fungi. In fact, when certain mycorrhizal fungi are placed in
| high-stress environments, the rate of HGT increases. It's not
| really understood what mechanisms cause this, but it seems to
| be an adaptation to quickly adapt and evolved to a new
| environment by borrowing genes from other soil organisms
| chovybizzass wrote:
| ...this is how the aliens injected their DNA in monkeys 20,000
| years ago.
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