Environmental News Network - Scientists Find High Mutation Rates Generating Genetic Diversity Within Huge, Old-Growth Trees

Details: 19.Jul

The towering, hundreds of years old Sitka spruce trees growing in the heart of Vancouver Island’s Carmanah Valley appear placid and unchanging.

The towering, hundreds of years old Sitka spruce trees growing in the heart of Vancouver Island’s Carmanah Valley appear placid and unchanging.

In reality, each one is packed to the rafters with evolutionary potential.

UBC researchers scraped bark and collected needles from 20 of these trees last summer, sending the samples to a lab for DNA sequencing. Results, published recently in Evolution Letters, showed that a single old-growth tree could have up to 100,000 genetic differences in DNA sequence between the base of the tree, where the bark was collected, and the tip of the crown.

Each difference represents a somatic mutation, or a mutation that occurs during the natural course of growth rather than during reproduction.

Continue reading at University of British Columbia.

Image via University of British Columbia.

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Scientists Find High Mutation Rates Generating Genetic Diversity Within Huge, Old-Growth Trees