How the tomato created the potato
What came first, potato or tomato? A new study on genetics indicates that the answer is that juicy and fragrant tomatoes were the first to arrive on planet Earth, and finally helped the starchy starchs to do the same.
About 9 million years ago, natural consanguinity in nature between tomato plants and a plant species similar to potatoes in present -day South America has given way to what we know like the potato. This new factory (and nutritional) was born from an evolutionary event which sparked the formation of the tuber – the underground structure that plants such as potatoes, yam and Taros use to store food. The results are detailed in a study published on July 31 in the journal Cell.
“Our results show how an event of hybridization between species can trigger the evolution of new traits, allowing even more species to emerge,” said Sanwen Huang, co-author of the study and agricultural genomicist of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in a press release. “We finally resolved the mystery where the potatoes come from.”
A confusing plant
Potatoes are one of the most important cultures in humanity. Sps provide basic nutrients, including carbohydrates, dietary fibers (found in their skin) and vitamins and minerals such as potassium, magnesium and iron. They are also considered as a culture that respects the United Nations, due to their low greenhouse gas emissions compared to other cultures. They can also develop in areas where certain natural resources are limited and costly. Potatoes are versatile and can develop in a wide variety of conditions, making it a good choice of harvest for several regions.
Although it is such a basic culture, the origin of this essential starchy foods has intrigued scientists. Modern potato plants seem physically almost identical to three species similar to chili potatoes called Etuberosums. However, etuberosums do not have signature tubers that allow potatoes to store nutrients and reproduce easily. This is one of the reasons why etuberosums are considered “similar to potato” and not complete sps. Phylogenetic analysis also shows that potato plants are in fact more closely linked to tomatoes than etuberosums.
To look more closely, the research team of this new article studied 450 genomes of cultivated potatoes common in farms and 56 species of wild potatoes.
“Wild potatoes are very difficult to sample, this data set therefore represents the most complete collection of genomic data from wild potatoes ever analyzed,” added Zhiyang Zhang, co-author and biologist of the study at the Institut de GĂ©nomique Agricole de Shenzhen, part of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
All potato species contained a mixture of genetic material from Etuberosum plants and tomatoes. According to the team, this suggests that modern potatoes come from a hybridization event – when individuals from two different species are successfully reproduced – between these plants millions of years ago. While etuberosums and tomatoes are distinct species, they share a common ancestor who lived around 14 million years ago. Even after diverging for about 5 million years, both could cross. This profession is what gave birth to the first potato plants with tubers about 9 million years ago.
[ Related: Scientists finally figured out why tomatoes don’t kill you. ]
A survival model
Researchers also drawn the origins of the main genes of tubers within the potato. The gene that indicates to the plant when starting to make tubers (called SP6A) came from the tomato side of the family and not potato -shaped plants. An important distinct gene that helps control the growth of underground rods that form tubers (called IT1) from the Etuberosum side. Without any of these genetic parts, it would be impossible for the resulting hybrid offspring of producing tubers.
In addition, this scalable innovation rode the rapid uprising of the Andes. New ecological environments emerged with all these upheavals. The first potatoes were able to respond with a tuber that stores underground nutrients – a very useful line to survive the weather conditions. The tubers also allow potato plants to reproduce without pollination or seeds. The buds grow from the tuber to grow new plants, so this trait helped the potatoes to spread quickly. They finally completed various ecological niches of light meadows downwards to the meadows to high and cold meadows in Central and South America.
“The evolution of a tuber has given potatoes a huge advantage in difficult environments, fueling an explosion of new species and contributing to the rich diversity of potatoes that we see and that we are counting today,” said Huang.
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