Hello and Happy Labor Day---
I have a question for the plant-ed group... I am preparing to teach my
sophomore plant biology students about plant cell components, including
plastids. Part of what we will do in class is to discuss some of Lynn
Margulis' writing about endosymbiosis that lead to the presence of
chloroplasts in plant cells.
I know a great deal of work has focused on the chloroplast and
mitochondrial genomes in plants, and I know that chloroplasts are related
to the other plastids (chromoplasts, leukoplasts, amyloplasts, etc.).
However, I have never heard of any work on the genomes of other plastids.
Is this because chloroplasts are more easily extracted, or more abundant
in plant cells than in other plastids? Is the DNA lost from these other
kinds of plastids? Are there fewer copies of the plastid chromosome in
amyloplasts (for example) than in chloroplasts? Have I just missed
discussion of alternate plastid DNA in the literature?
This is another example of a set of questions that I feel that I should be
able to answer if it arises in class, but I have no clue about the
genetics of the other (less-glamorous?) plastids in plant cells. I hope
that I didn't just miss this in my earlier botany classes, and that some
of you may shed some light on this question.
Thanks very much in advance!
--Dana
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Dana A. Dudle
Dept. of Biology
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
ddudle at depauw.edu
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