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this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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This happened in a biology class where we had groups of people trying to get the DNA out of fruits and vegetables, my group had chosen an onion, in an effort to try and be the cool kid I ate some of the onion, no one noticed.
Do fruits have DNA?!? Like unique DNA like human do?
All plants, animals, mushrooms, bacteria, etc have DNA. Any time a living thing reproduces there can be unique mutations that give the offspring a unique DNA. And, especially if it is a sexual reproduction (having two parents, like in most fruits) the parents DNA is mixed together to form a unique combination of the two parents.
They do! Though I think their genome is a lot simpler
Oh man, sometimes yes but sometimes not so much. Know how humans have 23 chromosomes? And we're diploid, which means they come in pairs of 2?
Some plants have a few more pairs than that - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyploidy And some plants have way WAY more than 23 chromosomes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organisms_by_chromosome_count There's a plant at the bottom of that list that has 1260 chromosomes.
I only took 1 botany class back in college, so I don't know or remember enough to talk about this in more depth. I really only know enough to be shocked by how crazy a plant's genuine can be.
The way I've had it explained to me, plants as a general rule have a much, much larger genome than animals. The reason is simple. When an animal runs into a problem like not enough water, it can just get up and move. Plants are rooted where they are, prey to whatever comes along. They have to develop an arsenal of genes to deal with different situations, whether that's drought resistance or producing various toxins so that animals don't make a meal of them. It's not like animals don't do this to some degree - the immune system is incredibly elaborate - but not as much.
Whoa, very interesting! Biology is so fascinating
Except for onions, ironically.