Cathy Kiefer | GT Towards the end of the 19th century, scary stories about deadly plants began to appear everywhere. Terrible tentacles flutter trees and swallow careless travelers to distant lands. The crazy teachers raised wild dew plants and pitchers on raw steak until their predatory creatures turned around and ate them too. Young Arthur Conan Doyle stuck near the flag on threads depicting everyone’s favorite sarcophagus, Aphrodite’s fly trap. Based on completely new botanical discoveries, he meticulously described the dilapidated traps, the way insects catch them and how well they digest their prey. But even his rockets were incredibly large, big enough to bury and destroy a human. Carnivorous and cannibalistic plants have been around for a while, and for that you can thank Charles Darwin. Until the days of Darwin, most people refused to believe that plants ate animals. He was against the natural order of things. mobile animals eat; Plants were food and could not move – if killed, they would only be in self-defense or by mistake. Darwin spent 16 years conducting rigorous experiments that proved otherwise. He showed that the leaves of some plants were transformed into intelligent structures that not only trap insects and other small creatures, but also digest them and absorb the nutrients released by their carcasses. In 1875, Darwin published the Insect-Eating Plants, detailing everything he discovered. In 1880, he published another book that breaks the myth, the power of movement in plants. The realization that plants can move and kill has inspired not only a very popular kind of horror story but also generations of biologists who want to understand plants with unexpected habits. Today, carnivores are going through another great moment as researchers begin to get answers to one of the great unsolved mysteries of botany: How did moderately flowered flowering plants evolve into deadly carnivores? advertising
land and sea em>. ” src = ”width =” 300 ″ height = ”455 ″ srcset =” 2x ”/> Zoom / Stories about killing plants were popular in the late 19th century. In 1887, the American author James William Boyle described the fictional man-eating tree Ya-te-veo (“I see you”) in his book Land and Sea. JW Boyle Since Darwin’s discoveries, botanists, ecologists, entomologists, physiologists, and molecular biologists have explored every aspect of these plants, drowning them in jugs full of liquid, immobilizing them with sticky “fly trap” leaves or trapping them in traps and traps. . They described what plants represent and how – as well as some of the benefits and costs of their exotic lifestyle. Recent advances in molecular science have helped researchers understand the main mechanisms that govern the carnivorous lifestyle: How a fly trap settles so quickly, for example, and turns into a “stomach” for insect juice and then an “intestine” . to suck up the remnants of its prey. But the big question remains: How did evolution provide these dissidents with the means to eat meat? The fossils provide almost no evidence. There are very few and the fossils can not show molecular details that could lead to an explanation, says the biophysicist. Rainer Heydrich from the University of Würzburg in Germany, who explores the origins of meat in 2021. Annual Plant Biology Review. Innovations in DNA sequencing technology now mean that researchers can tackle the question in a different way, by searching for sarcophagus-related genes, determining when and where these genes are activated, and tracing their origin. There is no evidence that carnivores acquired some of their wild habits by stealing genes from their animal victims, Hedrich says, although genes sometimes pass from one type of organism to another. In contrast, a number of recent discoveries suggest the selection and reuse of existing genes with ancient functions ubiquitous among flowering plants. “Evolution is insidious and flexible. Takes advantage of pre-existing tools »Victor Albert, phytogenetic biologist at Buffalo University. “It’s easier in development to redefine something than to make something new.” Zoom / Charles Darwin grew sunflower and other carnivorous plants in his Down House greenhouse at his home in Kent. He experimented for 16 years before publishing his groundbreaking book Insect eating plants. Heritage Photos GT