#Polyploid

[antimony-ore]

"Polyploid" and Regular Daisy Fleabane 28(58) days later

That single suspected polyploid (left) that sprouted is double the size and doing much better than the regular seedlings (right), which have gone from many to uh not so many.

It seems like the single big sprout likes the heat mat and the tinier variety did not, I have more seeds of both to test out if this crop fails.

I suspect more of the "polyploid" variety will sprout if I stratify it longer and more of the regular variety will live if I take them off the heat mat after they germinate.

I also called time-of-death on the Sulfur Cinquefoil and the Bladder Campion, both got replanted and put in cold stratification on the 15th.

I don't think the Bladder Campion needs cold stratification per se given how many sprouted last time so those will be coming out in a month.

I'm going to stratify the Sulfur Cinquefoil for 2 months as only one sprouted and see if it does better. Both are coming off the heat mat once they germinate.

I replaced them in the starter tray with Rough Cinquefoil (what I misID'd as mock strawberry last year), which did get 2 months to stratify, and some catnip.

I'm going to call TOD on the Queen Anne's Lace and start more when I pull the second round of trefoils out in a few days, a lot of these don't seem to benefit from the heat mat.

So far just the Rose Milkweed, the Buckwheat, and the one odd Daisy Fleabane liked the heat.

[iamthekaijuking]

I love the Piklopedia entry on the Jumbo Bulborb. Olimar mentions that its abnormal large size is due to "abnormal extra chromosomes due to failed meiosis" and that it "is unable to reproduce".

how does a space trucker even know cytogenetics without any advanced equipment tho

Maybe they just have like a bio scanner like subnautica or something, I use a similar stuff in my primary novel setting. It’s convenient.

Olimar does correctly label the affliction the jumbo bulborb has as polyploidy. Most animals have two sets of chromosomes (except for things like male Hymenopterans but I think we all know that family of animals is a bunch of freaks) as adults, but they don’t start out like that. During the earliest stages of fertilization they have more, and the excess is just discarded.

How many extra chromosomes jumbos have, we don’t know. But apparently bulborbs with polyploidy grow extra huge but never develop to the point of sexual maturity. It’s possible that the extra chromosomes have resulted in too many growth hormones, meaning that jumbos are in a permanent state of puberty.

A hormone imbalance is what caused the (unfortunately late) Goliath the American bullfrog tadpole to grow massive. While we don’t know why Goliath had a hormone imbalance, the results were very similar to jumbo bulborbs. Basically just continuous growth but never growing up, and eventually reaching a point where his anatomy couldn’t support his size.

[oaresearchpaper]

Effect of Colchicine on In-vitro Cultures of Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) for Polyploid Development

Abstract

Crop improvement possibilities in turmeric Curcuma longa (L.) are limited due to its triploid nature except for polyploidisation. Colchicine is a chemical that is used frequently to make plants polyploidy. Hence, this research aimed to study the effect of colchicine on the ability to induce polyploidisation of in-vitro turmeric cultures. The study consisted of two experiments: (1) assay on in-vitro culturing for callus induction and (2) assay on colchicine treatments and polyploidy screening. In experiment 1, turmeric rhizome buds were cultured on MS-solidified medium for callus induction with 100 mL coconut water, 2.5 and 4.5 mg L-1 2,4-D, 0.93 mg L-1 KIN, and without growth regulators. In addition, cell suspension culture was tested for callus induction with 4.5 mg L-1 2,4-D and 0.93 mg L-1 KIN.  For polyploidy induction in experiment 2, in-vitro developed callus tissues were transferred to liquid MS medium supplemented with various concentrations of colchicine (0, 0.05, 0.10, 0.15, and 0.20%) for 2 days. Then acetocarmine staining method and microscopic observation were attempted to count the chromosome number. Nucleus size; nucleus area (µmSq) and perimeter (µm) were referred using microscopic observation under 1000× magnification and BEL capture software. The results revealed that MS-solidified medium supplemented with coconut water was most effective in inducing callus. The nucleus area (371.225 µmSq) and perimeter (65.725 µm) of the cells in 0.05% colchicine for 2 days showed the highest results. It can be concluded that 0.05% colchicine concentration has an effect on nuclear size increment thereby possibly inducing polyploidization of turmeric.

Introduction

Turmeric is regarded as the golden spice with innumerable health benefits. Turmeric, scientifically known as Curcuma longa L. belongs to the Zingiberaceae family and genus Curcuma. Turmeric is cultivated most extensively in India, followed by Bangladesh, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. In most tropical regions of Africa, America, and the Pacific Ocean Island, it is also grown on a modest basis. The world’s biggest producer, importer, and user of turmeric is India (Shrishail et al., 2013).

It has many cultivars due to its highly variable morphology and the wide range of chromosome numbers in the genus, with diploid, triploid, and tetraploid plants. Curcuma longa belongs to the triploid species (2n=3x=63), a rhizomatous perennial herb whose rhizome is used as one of the most common sources of spices in the world. Turmeric's unique flavour has made it popular for usage as a flavoring ingredient, cosmetic, textile dye, and other applications. Major active ingredients of turmeric include three curcuminoids; curcumin, demethoxycurcumin, and bisdemethoxycurcumin , among curcumin is the main chemical component of turmeric with 0.3-8.6% (Phukan et al., 2022). 

Turmeric is a highly valuable plant in the world. Therefore, crop improvement is timely and important for turmeric, targeting high-yielding varieties and enhancing the quality and quantity of curcumin, with high oleoresin and essential oil content, to overcome the hybridisation barrier and enhance the fertility of the plant, pest resistance, environmental adaptability, and stress tolerance for biotic and abiotic stress (Forrester et al., 2020).

Turmeric is propagated by vegetative propagules that sustain the genetic makeup of the crop throughout the generations therefore; the genetic diversity is very low in turmeric. A spontaneous mutation is one way of generating genetic diversity (Ulukapi and Nasircilar, 2018). However, it is a very rare chance to happen (Oladosu et al., 2016). Also, there are many problems when considering conventional breeding of turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) and crop improvement (Dudekula et al., 2022). This is a monocotyledonous species, rarely flowering. It is classified as a sterile triploid plant (2n = 3x = 63) and cannot be used as parents for further breeding and to produce sterile flowers with no gametes. Therefore, having drawback of making inter-specific crosses (Ketmaro et al., 2012). Also, during the growing season (8-10 months) each rhizome can produce 10-25 lateral buds, but only 4-6 of them actively develop plantlets. Due to its nature, it has a limited genetic diversity and therefore, crop improvement and conventional breeding is difficult (Upendri and Seran, 2021). Thus a research was aimed to study the effect of colchicine on the ability to induce polyploidisation of invitro turmeric cultures.

Source : Effect of Colchicine on In-vitro Cultures of Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) for Polyploid Development | InformativeBD

[grrl-beetle]

Polyploid

[happypeachsludgeflower]

I love non sequiturs. They’re wonderful.

Others may say that they’re a clunky way to awkwardly change the subject—that they’re inelegant and fail every stealth check possible, but really?

They’re a blunt, hardedge way of saying “no I’m done talking about this topic anymore and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

They’re just such a power move honestly.

Have you ever looked an angry 6ft something man in the eye and said, “There’s a species of single celled organisms that live in almost uninhabitable lakes and has seven genders,” and just watched as befuddlement crosses his face and he then experiences the five stages of grief in five seconds because he knows he’s now going to have to listen to me explain polyploids in excruciating detail once more because I deemed him to be an asshole.

It’s so satisfying.

[botanyshitposts]

plants love being polyploid its one of their favorite things to be

[herpsandbirds]

Trying to understand whether environmental heterogeneity or stochasticity contributes to the establishment of polyploids in the ecosystem.

You know, typical Sunday shit.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Ignatio Chapela, a forest pathologist at the University of California, Berkeley, was even more adamant that the idea of “species” limits the stories we can tell about kinds. “This binomial system of naming things is kind of quaint, but it is a complete artifact,” he told me. “You define things with two words and they become an archetypal species. In fungi, we have no idea what a species is. No idea. . . . A species is a group of organisms that potentially can exchange genetic material, have sex. That applies to organisms that reproduce sexually. So already in plants, where out of a clone you can have change as time goes by, you have problems with species. . . . You move out of vertebrates to the cnidarians, corals, and worms, and the exchange of DNA, and the way groups are made, are very different from us. . . . You go to fungi or bacteria, and the systems are completely different—completely crazy by our standards. A long-lived clone can all of a sudden go sexual: you can have hybridization in which whole big chunks of chromosomes are brought in; you have polyploidization or duplication of chromosomes, where a completely new thing comes out; you have symbiotization, the capture of, say, a bacterium that allows you to either use the whole bacterium as part of yourself or use parts of that bacterium’s DNA for your own genome. You’ve become something entirely different. Where do you break down the species?”

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

[antimony-ore]

This post just solved a mystery in my yard. Thank you.

I have both common fleabane (erigeron philadelphicus) and daisy fleabane (erigeron annuus).

Steven and I went for a little nature walk today. Identified some plants, saw some wildlife, and just enjoyed each others company.

June 4th 2023

We went to a park in my old childhood neighborhood first, and walked around a bit in the small forest there. Its been so long since I'd last traveled those paths so I'm not sure why I was so surprised to not find it familiar. Almost like I didn't expect things to grow, erode, or be changed by man-made things. It was a bit disappointing because I was expecting a bit of a nolstagic rush to be honest. I did end up actually getting it just a bit later when we came up a slight include to a sort of ridged area. That was what I was remembering and considering my original surprise that things were not the same only a little bit before I was now surprised at how much this little spot was the same.

During this stop, I found and identified some Common Cinquefoil, which I actually sort of recognized! As the other day I found and identified Dwarf Cinquefoil in a different parks wooded are. I'm not going to lie, I did feel pretty proud of myself for that.

The other flower we found at this park was Common Fleabane. I enjoyed this one because originally Steven had asked, "It's just a daisy, isn't it?" Which did actually make me stop and look it up, because yea it kinda at first glance looks like what I'd just consider a daisy.

After this little jaunt, we headed over a much larger forested area that surrounds a couple of ponds. Also in my old stomping ground, it happens to be one of the places I used to always go fishing with my dad. I'm hoping Steven and I get around to getting fishing licenses this year, cause I'd love to go back and catch some sunfish with him.

During this chunk of our journey, and I suppose similarly in the other park, there really wasn't a whole lot of flowers. To be fair it's a qoodland area, not a sunny field so..

But of the wildflowers we did see, I was able to identify these two;

Yellow Avens (Which I might have found d at the first park, know that I'm trying to remember it. But moving photos around in the tumblr app is painful to say the least, so I'm just gonna include this here.)

And Red-Osier Dogwood!

I was unable to identify this next plant however, because while I was trying to we were hearing some sort of cry. At first I though it was a bird or frog, but then I saw movement in the brush and realized it was a baby deer! I think it was crying out for its mom, because it's definitely the aound we were hearing for a while. I accepted defeat, photographed the mystery flowers and tried to get a quick picture of the deer before we moved on.

Most of the bundles of these flowers had already bloomed and started to fall from the plant, so I think it must have been an early spring bloom? But there was both white and purple versions of it in the same area.

If anyone wants to weigh in, feel free!

I've got more photos to share from this walk, so stick around for that!

Most of these

[antimony-ore]

2 weeks (44 days) later

66% germination 0% mortality common milkweed.

Rose milkweed coming out of the starter tray because some started to die off, filled its place with more milfoils. 44% germination 25% mortality.

Buckwheat/yellow dock going strong. 31% germination, 0% mortality.

The trefoils after 7 days germinating. 22% germination, 0% mortality.

100% survival of the MANY regular daisy fleabane. Extremely high germination, 0% mortality.

That one suspected "polyploid" that sprouted staying strong. Extremely low germination, 0% mortality.

Same goes for the one queen anne's lace! Low germination, 0% mortality.

That one sickly sulfur cinquefoil collapsed, but is still trying, the single oxalis sprout died :/ low germination, high mortality lol.

And I called TOD on the bladder campions (39% germination, 100% mortality)

Tomorrow I'm starting to stratify more bladder campion to germinate without the heat mat since they all died and replacing them in the tray with rough cinquefoil.

[giulliadella]

Speculative Biology of Euclydeans (and Bill Cipher) part 5

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, UPDATE

I have never in my life imagined that I will continue this series, but I am doing it, thanks to some of my insane fans who asked for this. In this part I will talk about developmental biology of Euclydeans which is probably the biggest challenge so far.

As always, this analysis is based on two assumptions:

Before Bill Cipher became a demigod, he was a biological, living organism and so were the rest of his species.

Even after Bill Cipher became a demigod, he still retained some physical characteristics of his biological form.

And a fair content warning: This contains anatomy illustrations. This isn't anything gory, but there are people who are squeamish, so you've been warned.

Click on the images to get better quality!

And without further ado, let's begin.

Euclydean Body Plan

A body plan (also called Bauplan) is a morphological quality of an animal which can tell us clearly to which phylum it belongs. An arthropod will have a very distinct body plan from a vertebrate for example. Body plans are coded by Hox genes in animals and they determine the way an animal's body is going to develop from embryonic stages to adulthood. Euclydeans are aliens, so they don't have Hox genes, but they probably have something similar. Even if they don't have DNA (and they most likely don't), they still have some way of passing their traits to their offspring, which is essential for every living organism. Since I don't have any other option, I will call them genes and genomes.

The body plan of a Euclydean is relatively simple. They are bilaterally symmetrical, shelled, invertebrate organisms. The shell can take three distinct shapes: a triangle, a trapezoid and a rhombus (or a square, but remember, squares are rhombuses that have all four angles at 90 degrees). I haven't found mentions of any other polygons anywhere, but if you did, please tell me.

The shape of the shell was a status symbol within Euclydean society, with triangles being the lowest and squares the highest class. I was thinking about why that would be and after spending an insane amount of researching, I think I found a plausible (although most likely not true) answer: Polyploidy.

Polyploidy is a phenomenon in which the entire genome duplicates. It's very common and often encouraged in plants, since it makes fruits larger or fruiting period longer. Wheat, tomatoes, strawberries, corn and many more plants that we grow are polyploid. In most animals, poliploidy is lethal. It is lethal in humans. But some species or annelids, mollusks, insects, fish and amphibians can be polyploid. My favorite example of polyploidy is in green toads (Bufotes spp.) where polyploidy forms a species complex.

I won't go too far into toad genetics here, but in central Asia, there is a species of green toad that is diploid (like humans - it has one copy of its genome from the father and one from the mother) and one that is polyploid (4n - tetraploid - has two genome copies from each parent). When these two hybridize they create a third species which can be either, but it often has characteristics that place it "in between" the two other species. This hybrid species is fertile and can mate with the other two and that's how you get a species complex.

I believe that Euclydeans are a similar species complex. Triangles would be diploid in that case and rhombuses would be 4n tetraploid. (Because a rhombus basically is two triangles stuck to each other. Duplication of an entire genome could result in something like that easily.) Trapezoids would be a hybrid between the two.

So, triangles are 2n diploid, rhombuses are 4n polyploid and trapezoids are 3n hybrids. Each of these can mate with any other, but the offspring will be different, depending on the pairing. Two triangles will always have a triangle child. Two rhombuses will always have a rhombus child. A triangle and a rhombus will always have a hybrid trapezoid child. Two trapezoids, however, will have a trapezoid child in 50% of cases, whilst 25% will be triangles and 25% rhombuses. A trapezoid and a triangle have a 50-50% chance of having a child trapezoid or a triangle. A trapezoid and a rhombus will have 50-50% chance of their child being either a trapezoid or a rhombus. I made you a graphic, so you can understand easier:

What this essentially means, is that whenever someone mates with a triangle, their ploidy (the numbers of genome copies they have) will lessen, whilst mating with a rhombus will cause it to increase. Since Euclydean society valued more symmetrical and more polygonal rhombuses, this was probably the reason why triangles were the second class citizens. Trapezoids have only 25% chance of having a triangle child, so their marriage might be scrutinized and policed if that was the case (maybe that's what Bill's erotic novel was about?)

Embryonic Development

This was requested by one of my fans (all of them credited below) and it was honestly the biggest challenge ever put in front of me, but I don't give up easily!

One thing that we certainly know about Euclydeans is that they are bilaterally symmetrical. This means that they have a left and a right side. Since this is the case, their ancestors were probably like this as well. But, Euclydean shells also have radial symmetry (which means that you can draw symmetry lines from one tip of the angle to the other, or to the base of other side from every angle). Luckily for us, Earth has something like that too: Echinoderms (sea stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and some other groups).

Echinoderms are almost all radially symmetrical, but they have evolved from a bilaterally symmetrical ancestors. This is further proven by their larvae being bilaterally symmetrical too. I believe that Euclydean embryos probably look more like a bilaterally symmetrical organisms, similar to bipinnaria larvae of sea stars. But, as the embryo further develops, they become more "shaped" and gain the radial symmetry as well.

As we all know now, Euclydeans reproduce sexually. Their embryos develop inside a uterus of a parent (which could be both a male and a female, since many people pointed out to me that they are very likely hermaphrodites, which absolutely checks out). Since Bill claimed several times that both Ford and Mabel should have eaten their twins in the uterus, I proposed the idea of oophagy (or adelphophagy) as the means by which Euclydeans feed their offspring in utero. This is further proven by that silly image from thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com where Bill drew himself as a baby in uterus, but he had a bottle of milk in one hand. He obviously doesn't know much about humans and placental mammals, but since he was older than 16 when his dimension was destroyed, it's very likely that he had sex education in school, so he knows how Euclydean babies feed in uterus.

Oophagy simply means that the mother produces many yolk rich eggs that her baby will be able to consume as it grows. If some of those eggs are fertilized, besides the one that will become a baby, then we're talking about adelphophagy where one, strongest embryo hunts down other embryos as food. Sharks are probably most famous for this, but several species of wasps and marine snails also practice it. Bill might have had a slight advantage over his other siblings because his eye (and consequentially his mouth) were larger due to his unusual mutation.

Euclydeans are shelled, but their shell does not develop fully inside the mother. Similarly to some species of oysters, young that grows inside the mother begins to develop shells (in oysters, this stage is referred to as "veliger larva"), but they are expelled out before the shell fully hardens. This is in order to protect the mother's insides. Unlike oysters, Euclydeans have just one (or maybe very rarely two) children at a time, so their baby is large. Judging from the size of the vaginal slit, it's probably around a third of their parent's size. That's very big (average human baby is just about 6% of the mother's weight), but Euclydean babies are born fully developed, with the exception of the shell. The shell fully develops when they begin to molt and so it hardens, looking more triangular (or any other shape, I don't know how to say that in English).

Here's the anatomy of the embryo and fetus in various stages of development. I don't know the specifics of anatomy of any Euclydean besides Bill Cipher, so it's him depicted here. Who asked for baby Bill's organs? Nobody, but you have them now:

So, this was everything I have proof of. But, in my shitty fanfiction "Bad Triangles Go to Therapy", I proposed that Euclydeans could have periods. I did this as a joke, but they could. Probably.

Since adelphophagy is extremely taxing for the mother, she would have a baby only every few years. But, if she somehow skipped this fertile period, she would have to expel all of the eggs that her body formed. This could be, or feel like, a menstruation, but they wouldn't shed uterine lining, just the eggs. Alternatively, a mother could simply reabsorb the eggs. This way, she would keep all of her nutrients inside her body and recover faster for the next fertile period. This is completely up to interpretation, because I have no idea.

@aroacejedi was the one who asked for embryonic development of Euclydeans, whilst @equilateralbill was the person with whom I discussed the logistics of Euclydean reproduction in more detail. They are the ones you should thank for this bullshit.

As always, anyone is free to use this for anything, just link to the post, or any other part of this series. Have fun, love ya!

[ashenties]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🥭 MANGOES & MAYBE 🥭 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

nerdy!kuroo × popular!reader (but lowkey nerdy too) genre: slow-burn fluff | college au | soft academia | mango-coded romance summary: you used to sit beside him like strangers—until a mango thesis, late night study sessions, and quiet conversations about ester bonds changed everything.

You weren’t exactly close.

For the longest time, you and the guy next to you in Chem-Finance were just… there. Sitting beside each other. Sharing space, but not words.

He was quiet. Diligent. All sharp angles, messy hair, and pen caps always tucked between the teeth. Always scribbling notes with laser focus and mumbling formulas like he was reciting spells.

And you? Well, people might’ve labeled you “popular,” but they didn’t know you stayed up late reading research papers just for fun. Especially anything related to organic chemistry and food science. You didn’t talk about it much—most people tuned out at the word "isomer"—so you kept it to yourself.

Until one day, after weeks of shared silence, you leaned toward him before lecture started and asked, “Hey… random question. Would you help me with a food chemistry thesis?”

He turned to you slowly. “Depends on the fruit.”

You grinned, a little nervous. “Mangoes.”

He froze. Blinked. Then the faintest smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Elite choice.”

“You think?”

“Mangoes are chemically fascinating. Ripening rate, sugar-acid balance, volatile compounds—it’s like fruit alchemy.”

That made you perk up, pleasantly surprised. “Exactly! That’s why I picked it. The ester interactions alone could take up an entire section.”

Now he was staring at you like you’d just revealed a hidden level of a video game.

“…You know esters?”

“Um, yeah. I’m majoring in food chemistry and finance.”

He blinked again. “No way. I’m chemistry and finance.”

You both laughed.

After a beat, he added, “You could look at my strawberry thesis if you want. For reference. Similar structural breakdowns.”

“Strawberries? Aren't strawberries... kind of boring?”

“excuse me? they’re a polyploid hybrid with over 600 volatiles and complicated parentage. I liked their duality—how they’re considered berries, but technically aren’t. Plus, they oxidize stupidly fast once cut. They’re a mess.”

You smiled. “That’s why you picked them?”

He looked sheepish for a second. “Also my ex liked them. So I thought maybe if I understood their chemical structure, I’d understand why she sucked.”

You snorted. “You tried to decode heartbreak through fruit?”

“I got an A.”

“That is lowkey impressive.”

From that day on, you brought him a small Tupperware of fresh mango pieces to class. He always accepted them with quiet reverence—and without fail, every time, he’d offer you a mango fun fact.

He announced one morning as you handed over the container, already opening it up and popping the fruit in his mouth “mango trees can live for over 300 years and still bear fruit.”

You paused mid-sip of your coffee, arching a brow with interest. “So basically, they’re the sugar daddies of the plant kingdom.”

Kuroo sputtered around the mango, half-laughing, half-struggling to recover.

You just grinned, grabbing a pen and sliding into your seat beside him. “Resilient and generous. Nature really peaked with that one. Oh and technically, I'm feeding you immortal snacks. How cool is that!”

He wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, smirking. “Cool enough to make me believe in soulmates with a fruit-based origin story.”

You started spending more time together after that. Studying. Swapping notes. Late-night library sessions where he explained reaction mechanisms and you countered with theories about flavor extraction in ripe versus overripe fruit. It was the kind of nerdy chemistry (pun very much intended) that felt easy.

He didn’t talk much at first, but when he did, he was sharp, teasing, and way more sarcastic than you’d expected. The quiet guy beside you turned out to be funny, lowkey cocky, and borderline annoying in the most endearing way.

But he never interrupted your train of thought. Never tried to one-up you. Just matched your energy and let you be.

That alone? Made him addictive company.

So when he turned to you after finance management class one day, scratching the back of his neck, and said, “Hey… there’s a cafe down the street doing a mango-themed menu,” you raised a brow.

“Oh?”

“Mango mousse. Mango sticky rice. All kinds. Thought you might want to join me for some… scientific research.”

You smiled. “Using me as an excuse to eat mangoes?”

“Definitely. Also, I think I’ve officially been conditioned. You feed me mango after class and now my brain expects it.”

You laughed. “Are you asking me out?”

He smirked. “I’m inviting you to assist me in a controlled, mango-based sensory experiment.”

“…That sounds dangerously romantic.”

He shrugged. “Only if the data supports it.”

She gave him a soft smile, "Text me the timings and address. I'll see you later" before turning around and leaving him a smiling fool

[oaresearchpaper]

Effect of Colchicine on In-vitro Cultures of Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) for Polyploid Development

Abstract

Crop improvement possibilities in turmeric Curcuma longa (L.) are limited due to its triploid nature except for polyploidisation. Colchicine is a chemical that is used frequently to make plants polyploidy. Hence, this research aimed to study the effect of colchicine on the ability to induce polyploidisation of in-vitro turmeric cultures. The study consisted of two experiments: (1) assay on in-vitro culturing for callus induction and (2) assay on colchicine treatments and polyploidy screening. In experiment 1, turmeric rhizome buds were cultured on MS-solidified medium for callus induction with 100 mL coconut water, 2.5 and 4.5 mg L-1 2,4-D, 0.93 mg L-1 KIN, and without growth regulators. In addition, cell suspension culture was tested for callus induction with 4.5 mg L-1 2,4-D and 0.93 mg L-1 KIN.  For polyploidy induction in experiment 2, in-vitro developed callus tissues were transferred to liquid MS medium supplemented with various concentrations of colchicine (0, 0.05, 0.10, 0.15, and 0.20%) for 2 days. Then acetocarmine staining method and microscopic observation were attempted to count the chromosome number. Nucleus size; nucleus area (µmSq) and perimeter (µm) were referred using microscopic observation under 1000× magnification and BEL capture software. The results revealed that MS-solidified medium supplemented with coconut water was most effective in inducing callus. The nucleus area (371.225 µmSq) and perimeter (65.725 µm) of the cells in 0.05% colchicine for 2 days showed the highest results. It can be concluded that 0.05% colchicine concentration has an effect on nuclear size increment thereby possibly inducing polyploidization of turmeric.

Introduction

Turmeric is regarded as the golden spice with innumerable health benefits. Turmeric, scientifically known as Curcuma longa L. belongs to the Zingiberaceae family and genus Curcuma. Turmeric is cultivated most extensively in India, followed by Bangladesh, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. In most tropical regions of Africa, America, and the Pacific Ocean Island, it is also grown on a modest basis. The world’s biggest producer, importer, and user of turmeric is India (Shrishail et al., 2013).

It has many cultivars due to its highly variable morphology and the wide range of chromosome numbers in the genus, with diploid, triploid, and tetraploid plants. Curcuma longa belongs to the triploid species (2n=3x=63), a rhizomatous perennial herb whose rhizome is used as one of the most common sources of spices in the world. Turmeric's unique flavour has made it popular for usage as a flavoring ingredient, cosmetic, textile dye, and other applications. Major active ingredients of turmeric include three curcuminoids; curcumin, demethoxycurcumin, and bisdemethoxycurcumin , among curcumin is the main chemical component of turmeric with 0.3-8.6% (Phukan et al., 2022).

Turmeric is a highly valuable plant in the world. Therefore, crop improvement is timely and important for turmeric, targeting high-yielding varieties and enhancing the quality and quantity of curcumin, with high oleoresin and essential oil content, to overcome the hybridisation barrier and enhance the fertility of the plant, pest resistance, environmental adaptability, and stress tolerance for biotic and abiotic stress (Forrester et al., 2020).

Turmeric is propagated by vegetative propagules that sustain the genetic makeup of the crop throughout the generations therefore; the genetic diversity is very low in turmeric. A spontaneous mutation is one way of generating genetic diversity (Ulukapi and Nasircilar, 2018). However, it is a very rare chance to happen (Oladosu et al., 2016). Also, there are many problems when considering conventional breeding of turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) and crop improvement (Dudekula et al., 2022). This is a monocotyledonous species, rarely flowering. It is classified as a sterile triploid plant (2n = 3x = 63) and cannot be used as parents for further breeding and to produce sterile flowers with no gametes. Therefore, having drawback of making inter-specific crosses (Ketmaro et al., 2012). Also, during the growing season (8-10 months) each rhizome can produce 10-25 lateral buds, but only 4-6 of them actively develop plantlets. Due to its nature, it has a limited genetic diversity and therefore, crop improvement and conventional breeding is difficult (Upendri and Seran, 2021). Thus a research was aimed to study the effect of colchicine on the ability to induce polyploidisation of invitro turmeric cultures.

Source : Effect of Colchicine on In-vitro Cultures of Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) for Polyploid Development | InformativeBD

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Polyploid

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Round 2.5 - Cnidaria - Polypodiozoa

(Sources - 1, 2)

Polypodiozoa is a class of Cnidarians that contains one order: Polypodiidea, one family: Polypodiidae, one Genus: Polypodium, and one species: Polypodium hydriforme. Perhaps other species exist, but P. hydriforme is the only one known.

Polypodium parasitizes the eggs of sturgeon and similar fishes (Acipenseridae and Polyodontidae). It is one of few animals that lives inside the cells of other animals. Polypodium possesses nematocysts and a cnidarian body plan but has an unusual life cycle. It spends most of its life inside the oocytes of acipenseriform fishes. In infected oocytes, Polypodium develops from a binucleate cell into an inside-out planuliform larva and then into an elongate inside-out stolon; the epidermal cell layer is located internal to the body and the gastrodermis is located externally. The embryo, larva and stolon are surrounded by a protective polyploid cell, which also functions in digestion. Just prior to the host’s spawning, Polypodium everts to the normal position of cell layers, revealing tentacles scattered along the stolon. During eversion, the yolk of the host oocyte fills the gastral cavities of the parasite, supplying the future free-living stage with nutrients. The parasitic phase of its life cycle usually takes several years. Finally, upon emerging from the host egg in fresh water, the free-living stolon fragments into individual medusoid-like organisms [images 1 and 2] that go on to multiply by means of longitudinal fission. In summer they form endodermal sexual organs: "female" ones showing ovaria and gonoducts, and "male" ones with simpler organization.

Not much is known about the evolution of Polypodium and how it came to be. Freshwater-living is rare for cnidarians, but not unheard of, as some hydrozoans are also freshwater. The Myxosporeans and Malacosporeans, fellow parasitic cnidarians, also have freshwater representatives.

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🤓☝️ Did you know that modern strawberries have more DNA than their ancestors? They have been bred into the polyploids, meaning they have eight copies of each chromosome compared to two of each in humans. Strawberries have so much DNA that you can't even fit all of the genetic information from a single strawberry into a TB of computer data!

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                 "I didn't ask."