Old math reveals secrets about monkeyflowers

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To Yuan, who’s devoted the past decade of his life to studying monkeyflowers, these spotted petals aren’t just eye candy for insects. They’re a botanical example of patterns found across the tree of life. From the evenly spaced striations of seashells to the stripes that adorn zebra flanks, all of these patterns may be created from some of the same evolutionary building blocks.

In a recent study, scientists showed that the dots that dapple monkeyflower petals are the result of a war between just two genes. Tussling over control of each plant cell’s pigments, these genes can seed wild amounts of diversity within even a single species.

“Pigmentation patterns are complex and ubiquitous in the natural world,” says Blackman, a co-author of the new research. “This study tells us that a relatively simple system can give rise to this complexity.”

Nature is full of patterns—visible traits that serve various biological functions, from attracting mates to warning predators to identifying members of the same species. Researchers have long understood that these patterns follow predictable mathematical models. 

The monkeyflower, —a hardy and fast-growing plant of the genus Mimulus, with a relatively simple genome—is the perfect organism to study the patterns of nature, says Irene Martinez, a Mimulus researcher at Binghamton University.

 

Monkeyflowers come in a mind-boggling array of colors, shapes, and patterns, even within a single species. In recent years, hundreds of scientists have cultivated the plants in their greenhouses, eager to uncover the genetic source of their diversity and the role of variation in the species’ survival. The flowers are also excellent proxies for other species that are harder to wrangle in the lab—such as leopards with their rosette-spotted fur.

Monkeyflower spots appear only on certain parts of the petal, for example, strictly avoiding others. By studying these speckle-free zones, Cooley and her team are homing in on another system that restricts the spots to specific regions.

“There is a long history of looking at a phenomenon and thinking: That seems so crazy and amazing, there is nothing to explain it,” Cooley says. “But as we work on it more, we find there are underlying principles.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/old-math-reveals-new-secrets-about-monkeyflowers-flower-patterns/

[Giorno Giovanna 3,178]

very cool and very interesting