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Article: Glitch splits hermaphrodite flowers.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- September 30, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Arizona scientists propose a new scenario to explain why perfectly good, everybody's-equal, bisexual flowers evolve forms with different genders.
A genetic goof that adds extra sets of chromosomes, or polyploidy, could trigger the split into gender forms, suggests Jill S. Miller, now of the University of Colorado in Boulder. She's studied the wolf-berries, or Lycium, but other plants may have similar stories, she and Lawrence Venable of the University of Arizona in Tucson argue in the Sept. 29 SCIENCE.
"It's something people hadn't really thought about," says plant-gender specialist Lynda Delph of Indiana University in Bloomington. Parts of the scenario ...