News article: Genes outside nucleus have disproportionate effect Posted: 12 Oct 2013 06:30 AM PDT
Excerpt: “… the tiny proportion of a cell’s DNA that is located outside the cell nucleus has a disproportionately large effect on a cell’s metabolism. The work, with the model plant Arabidopsis, may have implications for future treatments for inherited diseases in humans.”
Journal article: Cytoplasmic genetic variation and extensive cytonuclear interactions influence natural variation in the metabolome
Conclusion: “Natural genetic variation in the organellar genomes while frequently ignored will have to be kept at the front of future experimental approaches designed to understand the evolution and genetic architecture of organismal phenotypes.”
My comment: Transposable elements link what is known about epistasis in plants to nutrient-dependent receptor mediated epigenetic effects of odors on the microRNA/messenger RNA balance and adaptive evolution via the metabolism of nutrients to the species-specific pheromones that control the physiology of reproduction in species from microbes to man. What is known about plants was exemplified 6 years ago in flies.
See, for example: Intergenomic Epistasis for Fitness: Within-Population Interactions Between Cytoplasmic and Nuclear Genes in Drosophila melanogaster
People should soon begin to understand what it means to model environmental determinants of sex differences in flies, and in species from microbes to man. My model, for example, is based on what is known about receptor-mediated intercellular signaling, intermolecular interactions, and intranuclear restructuring in the plant genome. That means the molecular mechanisms are conserved.
It is no surprise to learn about this conservation in plants 6 years after it was reported in Drosophila! Indeed, if the molecular mechanisms were not conserved there would be no direct link from plant life to animal life on this planet sans mutation-initiated natural selection. Because no experimental evidence suggests that mutation-initiated natural selection occurs, others probably should have realized that plant and animal life is nutrient-dependent, and that the nutrients metabolize to chemical signals in plants that are called pheromones in animals. But in all species, nutrient chemicals and other chemical signals control reproduction as evidenced across a continuum of cause and effect.
James V. Kohl detailedl how quantized energy-dependent microRNA biogenesis links the pheromone-controlled physiology of reproduction to biophysically constrained viral latency and healthy longevity. Links from what organisms eat to the enzyme-dependent metabolism of food also link metabolic networks to microRNA-mediated genetic networks in the context of RNA interference. Drug therapies alter RNA interference by altering cell type differentiation in all cells of all individuals of all species. For comparison, during the past 26 years, Kohl has detailed how the chemistry of protein folding is biophysically constrained at every level of biological organization by conserved molecular mechanisms.