A dreary weed that grows in the cracks of parking lots has caused an uproar amongst biologists by challenging one of the basic laws of genetics.
U.S. researchers, reporting Wednesday in the journal Nature, say their lab samples of thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) appear to bust a fundamental rule of inheritance.
Convention dictates that all of one’s genetic toolbox, for better or for worse, is handed down from one’s parents.
But in the bizarre case reported in Nature, the weeds seem to have genes that existed in their grandparents, but not in their parents.
Heretical Weed Challenges DNA Rulebook
Published
Aaron Fulkerson 