Saturday, February 25, 2017

Where do flowers come from? Shedding light on Darwin’s 'abominable mystery'



Scientist have partially solved the origin of flowering plants. A team from the Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire et Végétale questioned the appearance of a structure as complex as the flower over the course of evolution. We know that flowering plants provide our food and contribute color to the plant world. Flowering plants appeared only 150 million years ago. They were directly preceded by a group known as the gymnosperms. the flower contains the male organs and the female organs, surrounded by petals and sepals, while the ovules, instead of being naked, are protected within the pistil. They wondered how was nature able to invent the flower, a structure so different from that of cones. The researchers found genes similar to those responsible for the formation of flowers, and which are organized according to the same hierarchy. The fact that a similar gene has been found in flowering plants and their gymnosperm cousins indicates that this is inherited from their common ancestor.
I found this amazing because we see flowering plants everyday, but we never question how or why they are here in the first place. We know that they help give the world a better look by there ravishing colors, yet we have no clue how they came to be like so. I feel like this study will make more scientist to go back in time and draw out the genetics and history of the common ancestor of modern day flowers. 

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