Clever parasite
LiveScience reports of a strange behaviour of a vine plant which entwines with a host plant sucking its nutrients. But it does not stop with that mischief. It also indulges in biological engineering in hacks into the intra-plant communication system of the host plant and does a sort of a sql injection to turn the host’s behaviour to suit the interests of the parasite!
Clever indeed. This is what the report says, inter alia.
It’s bad enough when a parasite latches on to your body to suck you dry. But when it starts eavesdropping on your communications, enough already.
That’s what the parasitic dodder vine does. It consumes water and nutrients from a host plant and, scientists have just discovered, it taps into the host’s communication system.
Plants use RNA molecules to send messages to different parts, say from roots to leaves. In the new study, RNA molecules from a host tomato plant were found in the parasitic dodder vine, up to a foot away (30 cm) from where the dodder grafted itself to the host.
Picking up these RNA messengers could help the parasite synchronize its lifecycle with that of the host plant, explained Neelima Sinha at the University of California, Davis. “It might be important for the parasite to know when the host is flowering, so it can flower at the same time,” before the host dies, she said.
Read the full story in the Live Science web site.
Children and science
Surprisingly children show exemplary scientific temper and spirit of inquiry, given a chance!
Here is a set of scientific musings of school children peppered with humor and creativity!
To explain nuclear reactions, one child said, “When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions.”
Concerning astronomy, one child said, “Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the day-time.” And another said, “Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers.”
“Vacuums are nothings,” said a young physics student. “We only mention them to let them know we know they’re there.”
“Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on,” one child observed.
“Rain is often known as soft water, oppositely known as hail,” reported a budding meteorologist. Another added, “Thunder is a rich source of loudness.”
Other children added these observations: “Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound.” And, “It is so hot in some places that the people there have to live in other places.” And, “The wind is like the air, only pushier.”
These children have a way to go in their quest for more knowledge, but I applaud their efforts to learn more about the universe.
(The source of the aforesaid snippets has slipped out of my memory. I’ll be glad to acknowledge it if someone cares to point it out to me.)
It is time our parents and educationists imbibe a craving for pure science in the minds of children and provide a space for experimentation and error.
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