“budsicles!” Love it!
They would look awesome growing out of 114 red Solo cups. Seem kind of wasteful in those containers, though.
I think it may be part of the genetics my seeds picked up when I reversed, maybe they got extra ruderalis genes , or they are stunted from gnats ( I don't think so). I don't really know-- I am planning on reversing the bottom branches of my last original DDA seed eventually. I'm still going to grow more of these out, I do like them immensely.
Are they the result of a selfing... of a selfing? I've wondered if that could cause issues, but was thinking more along the lines of "...if the progeny was then used as a breeding partner." In truth, I would have guessed that such a plant/line would be good for several generations. Clones obviously are good for many.
I'm wondering if plants have genes that are switched off (or simply not used), and if the asexual reproduction might have caused some of those to get turned on / used due to some kind of mechanism that attempts to express diversity in the offspring in the abscence of a proper second parent.
Nature's machines are both far simpler and far more complex than I ever imagined as a child. Caenorhabditis elegans is a tiny nematode about 1mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. I heard about it the other day on some science-themed podcast or other. The species is mostly hermaphroditic females (they can self-fertilize) with a relatively small percentage of males. But that's not the interesting thing about C. elegans. What is interesting (to me, at least) is that the males of this species have
precisely 1,031 cells and the hermaphrodites have
precisely 959 cells. Also, upon examining the neural systems (not much of a "brain" in these things, lol) of *many* examples of the species, we've learned that each one of them has
precisely 302 neurons.
Talk about natures machines, lol, those things could have been stamped out on an assembly line. So I'm wondering... Is this the result of evolution? Are these numbers the best possible configuration for this particular species and, if so, were they arrived at through the usual process of random genetic mutations, some ending up being good for the species and getting passed down, while other mutations, not so good for the species, made the individuals carrying them less able to breed/compete and, therefore, led to evolutionary dead ends?
Or is this simply what happens when the majority of the individuals of a species are hermaphroditic and able to reproduce alone?
This is a useful organism for study. It's common, pretty simplistic (as living machines go, anyway), and there's not much likelihood that the local branch of PETA will storm the facility in a fit of mob rage if they learn that you've just dissected 100
nematodes. They're just not very cuddly
.
Due to the low number of cells present in the organism, it has been possible to study, well, all of them as opposed to just parts of the whole. For example, we've learned that during embryogenesis, 113 cells (111 in males) undergo programmed cell death and the remainder either differentiate terminally or become postembryonic blast cells. Why only 113 (/111), and not one more or one less? Again... natures machines.
The little critters are interesting in other ways, too. Numerous gut granules are present in their intestines. We still don't fully understand their purpose (along with the many aspects of these nematodes, despite our years of study). But it turns out that, when hit with UV light, they emit an intense blue fluorescence (and this is useful for something that's found in a nematode's gut...
how, exactly, lol?). That's just one of those weird science facts at this point, I suppose. But those granules also emit a dramatic burst of blue fluorescence when the nematode dies (young or old, it makes no difference). And they do so in a "wave" - like crowd activities at sporting events.
Weird science?
If I was all lit up right now, I might find myself thinking about the people who go absolutely mad over the concept of nanomachines, talking about how they could be used to build the machines that would build the machines that would build the machines (rinse/lather/repeat)... that would
do something useful. And, in so doing, I might start wondering if a bunch of other scientists had the same kind of thought - a few billion years ago. If you're such a long-lived organism that you routinely think on a truly "galactic" timescale - or if you can actually think in terms of the ultimate betterment of the species as opposed to what can I (or, at best, my offspring or my offspring's offspring) do for
myself - then you might decide, rather than spending countless trillions of whatever currency unit you use and staggering amounts of resources on terraforming planets... that you'd just design a few biological machines (which reproduce), seed the galaxy with them, and see what befalls the planets they land on after a few billion years.
Or maybe not. Good thing I'm not lit, huh?
My DDA's have a problem-----------see
with “old-man mumblings” thrown in for good measure...
Thank you Amy