#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.

[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

[bestanimal]

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.

[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

[ichxgo]

🤓☝️ 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!

⎡ anonymous ⫿ unscripted ⫿ accepting ⎦

                 "I didn't ask."

[i-am-a-fan]

Lapin Lightfoot!

Species Information:

-Basic info: Organic life form (Polyploid), They/Them pronouns (no distinguishing pronouns), 5ft, has the ability to reflect magic casted onto them. Studying under Grenivie.

-Path: Preservation (physical)

-Inspo: Medieval Europe and sea bunny sea slug.

Backstory summary:

Not really knowing what to do with their future, Lapin goes to do an internship at the “Mansion de Previcion” to strengthen their magic. However, their magic catches the eye of Grenivie and they take them in. Eventually going on to announce them as the next Head Caster. Since then, Lapin has viewed Grenivie as a sort of parental figure and hopes to live up to their expectations.

Art:

Polyploid Ref Sheet (outdated)