polyploidy is when you have the cell of your plants that have multiple copies of the same chromosome, in plants this can be a great thing. Polyploidy is something thats really only caused by a chemical known as colchicine, so toxic one grain can kill you and there is no cure. It used to be used to give better yielding, albeit sterile plants... Ironic it was the US government that pioneered the technology in an attempt to create a THC free marijuana for the creation of hemp during WWII. All they did was get the researchers really high, and give them cancer from the residual toxin. No one uses that stuff anymore since breeding practices have gotten so controlled. so there is the fyi on polyploidy lol. Yet another informative yet rather useless nerd moment!
look what you did, i had to pullout my pocket protector and some old links on this 1. so lets get nerdy up in here.
ok good post for the most part, a few things being off. polyploidial plants arent just caused by colchicine. there are plants and animals that are just born that way. and colchicine is only 1 way of changeing the plants cells. check out gibberellic acids and promalin.
as for it being deadly,,, yeah it can be but not something as small as 1 grain. "Colchicine is
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved for the treatment of
gout and also for
familial Mediterranean fever, secondary
amyloidosis(AA), and
scleroderma."
and it is still in use for plants aswell "Since
chromosome segregation is driven by microtubules, colchicine is also used for inducing
polyploidy in plant cells during
cellular division by inhibiting
chromosome segregation during
meiosis; half the resulting
gametes therefore contain no chromosomes, while the other half contain double the usual number of chromosomes (
i.e.,
diploid instead of
haploid as gametes usually are), and lead to embryos with double the usual number of chromosomes (
i.e. tetraploid instead of diploid). While this would be fatal in animal cells, in plant cells it is not only usually well tolerated, but in fact frequently results in plants which are larger, hardier, faster growing, and in general more desirable than the normally diploid parents; for this reason, this type of genetic manipulation is frequent in breeding plants commercially. In addition, when such a tetraploid plant is crossed with a diploid plant, the
triploid offspring will be sterile (which may be commercially useful in itself by requiring growers to buy seed from the supplier) but can often be induced to create a "seedless" fruit if pollinated (usually the triploid will also not produce pollen, therefore a diploid parent is needed to provide the pollen). This is the method used to create seedless
watermelons, for instance. On the other hand, colchicine's ability to induce polyploidy can be exploited to render infertile hybrids fertile, as is done when breeding
triticale from
wheat and
rye. Wheat is typically tetraploid and rye diploid, with the triploid hybrid infertile. Treatment with colchicine of triploid triticale gives fertile
hexaploid triticale."wikipedia
and i know its kinda lame to post other sites on this 1 but if your 1/2 the nerd i am youll dig this
Advanced Nutrients Medical - Bigger LEaves Via PROMALIN???
bcgrowers title
and by all means if ive missed or overlooked something call me out.
nerds unite and do things cool ppl dream about.
