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I opened the article expecting to read about its use in plant breeding: colchicine is renowned there for inducing polyploidy. Never knew it has a history in med
by CheeseFromLidl 10mo ago
I opened the article expecting to read about its use in plant breeding: colchicine is renowned there for inducing polyploidy. Never knew it has a history in medicine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyploidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyploidy
- 34679 10mo agoSame here. I have a bottle in my freezer for that purpose.
- kubafu 10mo agoNever heard of it, please tell me more about using it in plant breeding!
- mapmeld 10mo agoHumans have two copies of each chromosome. Plants in nature can have many more, and some can be induced to duplicate their chromosomes which sometimes gives them larger seeds and resilience to environmental conditions. Similar to hybrid crops but somehow containing the full genomes of both parents. Bread wheat is hexapoloid (containing sub-genomes from three varieties of wheat) and quinoa is tetraploid (containing two different species). There have been projects for ~100 years to make polyploid rice with heavier grain-weight, but they haven't been able to reproduce.
- kubafu 10mo agoSuper interesting, thanks!