Upending prevailing genetic theory, a team of scientists at Purdue University has discovered a mechanism in plants that allows them to correct defective genes from their parents by tapping into an ancestral data bank of healthy genetic material.In essence, the plants back up the evolutionary path and use past genes to restore traits that would otherwise be lost, according to a study published Tuesday in the online version of the journal Nature.The finding proposes “an extraordinary view of inheritance,” the scientists said in their paper.The mechanism appears to be a way for self-fertilizing plants, which are more likely to suffer from the negative consequences of inbreeding, to maintain a healthy level of genetic diversity and increase their chances of survival.It could also be a way for plants to adapt to changing environmental conditions by having a store of diverse traits at their disposal, the scientists said.The proposal offers a radical addition to the widely embraced laws of Mendelian genetics, which date back to the mid-1800s. They hold that plants and animals inherit only two copies of a gene — one from each parent. If both copies were defective, a plant would have no ability to correct the error.
