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In 1994 , tramp discovered a radical of strange trees maturate in a canyon in Wollemi National Park , about 60 international mile ( 100 kilometer ) west of Sydney , Australia . One tramper advise a park service natural scientist , who then showed leafage specimens to a plant scientist . It was at last determined they represented an ancient metal money that had been essentially stop dead in time since dinosaurs roamed Earth .
Called a " sustenance fogy " by some , the Wollemi true pine ( Wollemia nobilis ) is nearly monovular to maintain remains dating to theCretaceous period(145 million to 66 million years ago ) . There are now just 60 of these trees in the wild — and these tenacious survivors are threatened by bushfires in the region . It wasthought to have gone extinctaround 2 million year ago .
The Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) was rediscovered by a group of hikers in 1994.
Now , scientists from Australia , the United States and Italy havedecoded its genome , exuviate light on its unequalled evolution and reproductive habits , as well as aid preservation effort . The paper was posted to the preprint database bioRxiv on Aug. 24 and has not been match reviewed .
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The pinehas 26 chromosome — carry a staggering 12.2 billion understructure pairs . In comparison , human have only around 3 billion base dyad . Despite the size of their genome , Wollemi pines are extremely low in genetic diversity , evoke a bottleneck ( when the universe is shorten dramatically ) some 10,000 to 26,000 yr ago .
There are now just 60 Wollemi pines in the wild and these are threatened by bushfires.
Indeed , the plants do not exchange much inherited material . The remain trees look to procreate mostly by cloning themselves through coppicing — in which mark emerge from the understructure and become new tree .
Their rarity may be partially due to the high number of transposons , or " derail cistron " — stretches of deoxyribonucleic acid that can transfer their position within the genome . These elements also account for the genome ’s size . " The tiniest plant genome and the largest plant genome have almost the same number of genes . turgid differences in size of it normally add up from jumping gene , " Gerald Schoenknecht , program director for the National Science Foundation ’s Plant Genome Research Program tell apart Live Science . Schoenknecht was not call for with the inquiry , but the NSF did provide financial support .
Astransposonsleap to raw locations , they can shift the succession of " letter " in a DNA mote , thus causing or reversing genetic mutation in genes . They may bear functional DNA with them or alter DNA at the site of insertion , and thus have a substantial impact on the phylogeny of an being .
A replica fossil of a 90 million year old specimen of a Woolemi pine.
If the transposons induced harmful mutations , they may have bring to universe decline precipitated by a exchange climate and other element , the researchers said . These trying conditions may have go the plant to switch to clonal reproduction . Because increases in transposons correlate to sexual facts of life , a change to nonsexual reproduction may have reduced their potential launching of detrimental mutation . Paradoxically , while the trees were still reliant on intimate reproduction , the jumping gene may have played a persona in increase genetic diversity and thus at least temporarily made them more springy to changing conditions .
" In 99 % of all compositor’s case , mutations are in all likelihood not a near idea , " Schoenknecht said . " But over million of year , the 1 % that serve can move the species ahead . In this typeface it may have been a bit of an advantage . "
Decoding the genome has also unveil why the Wollemi pine is likely susceptible to disease — in exceptional , Phytophthora cinnamomi , a morbific water mildew that causes dieback . The tree ’s disease immune cistron are suppressed by a case of its own RNA that is connect with the development of broad leaves . Wollemi pine tree , unlike most conifers , have wide needles .
So , the evolution of wider leaves may have led to the crushing of disease resistance and opened the species up to pathogenic threats — which may have been unknowingly tracked in by tramper who lawlessly visit the protected spot . P. cinnamomiis coarse in cultivated plants .
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While only four small populations remain in the wild , the pines have been extensively propagate by botanic gardens and other institutions in an elbow grease to conserve them and study their unique biology . The species is considered critically endangeredby the IUCN .
Thus , the analytic thinking of the Wollemi pine ’s genome is not simply an academic curiosity — it has serious implications for the species ' survival .
