Sometimes Home Ownership Is Just Work...and Other Observances.

As the title suggests, home ownership isn't all fun. On days like today, it is simply drudgery. My neighbors do not care about their landscapes. Due to their lack of caring I have to almost continually hack and slash at non-native invasive species of flora. Today's exercise in futility included Japanese Knotweed(Fallopia japonica) treatment; which anyone that knows about this evil thing, knows it is a many year struggle to eradicate. I also did battle with the nearly as nasty Japanese honeysuckle(Lonicera japonica). As much as am loathe to use glyphosate herbicide, both of these species require it for effective control. I also got rid of some Virginia creeper(Parthenocissus quinquefolia), which is a native species here, but there seem no natural controls that hinder its growth.

It all seems a thankless job, but the 0.75 acres that I have staked out for weed control look better every year. I have nine gardens in this area, so I need to protect my precious plants that I have nurtured as well. Enough about that..

I did find a very odd bit about a member of the pant kingdom. Somehow I can usually segue a personal anecdote into something a lot more interesting. This may be unique in the kingdom of flora. There is a parasitic vine that not only performs the more typical 'behaviors' to its host--wrapping round it, and scoring nutrients and water from its host, but Strangleweed(Cuscuta pentagona) tranfers mRNA with its various host species.

Of course my gentle reader knows that no proteins are formed--in eukaryotes at any rate--without messenger RNA(mRNA). Sure genes code for proteins--and perform other neat tricks--but genes do not make proteins. Here is good summary of how one goes from a gene sequence to actually building the protein for which the gene is coded.

I find it fascinating that a parasitic plant has a sort of symbiotic relationship with its host at the sub-cellular level.

Now why has C. pentagona adapted do this?

Well, it is certainly not via process of thought. It is my blog so I will speculate. (Here's where I spill out some bullshit)

My opinion is that the exchange process turns off the host's defenses. Since most plants aren't really mobile, the defenses are typically chemical weapons. Yes, yes, I know that some plants have insect protectors as well, but these are unusual examples. By co-opting, and transferring mRNA with the host, it seems likely that the host would not recognize the parasite as an alternate form of life. The host reads the mRNA being transferred and there is no state of emergency declared as it 'believes' it to be its very own. I know that my speculation is at odds with what researcher James Westwood(study co-author) told Live Science, but message interception to gather data about the "host plant's growth and development" seems too anthropomorphic to me. Of course we could both be right, and/or wrong.

This really seems like a case of evolutionary convergence, as bacteria swap genetic genetic material across species, and viruses are dormant until they enter a host's cell. Curiouser and curiouser.

That's all I have that is both new and unusual. Plus, it has brevity in its favor :)