SilverEar writes "Imagine a creature that swims and preys on others, but once it eats a certain kind of plant, that plant grows inside it, causing the predator to lose its ability to prey and start using sunlight to make its food. Its preying mouth is replaced by an eye that is needed to find sunlight. This is the Hatena ('enigma' in Japanese). The kicker: when Hatena reproduces, one offspring is a peaceful photosynthesizer with the sun-seeking eye, while the other is yet again a predator with a voracious mouth."
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday July 05, @01:28PM (#28587539)
Easy solution: they will demand that plants possess the same rights as animals. Since they already demand that animals possess the same rights as humans, it will then follow that they will choose not to eat plant-based food just as they refuse to eat animal-based food (i.e., meat). This will leave them without a source of food, and the smart ones will abandon the cause while the dumb ones will die off.
No, not the same rights as humans, just the same rights as pets. Even this is an oversimplification but I think it gets the point across.
The point being that it is not appropriate to speak of animals having all the same rights as humans. I think this is well understood. The right to vote, for example, does not make sense since it presupposes knowledge of language, politics, issues etc. The rights that PETA members ascribe to animals, most basically, are the rights not to suffer and die at the hands of humans. These aren't that far out, when you consider the "arguments" in favor of the suffering and dying.
Actually once this cell totally integrates this endosymbiotic lifeform (the next step) it might very well become eukaryotic. Ironically that would make it an eukaryotic plant, which would presumably very easily evolve back into a predator.
when Hatena reproduces, one offspring is a peaceful photosynthesizer with the sun-seeking eye, while the other is yet again a predator with a voracious mouth."
The explanation is simple : cell division in the parent organism does not trigger cell division in the endosymbiotic lifeform. That endosymbiotic lifeform might very well be thought of as an infection.
It's a bacteria with a parasite that radically alters the host's "body" chemistry, and one of the daughter cells will inherit the parasite. And I presume that daughter cell will spawn a similar pair at the next mitosis division. I see no changing of species here.
I've known that since the momemt I heard about the platypus.
I still have this image of God and Devil sitting in a bar at the end of the universe, had a few beer, God doodles the platypus on a napkin and Devil manages to snort out a "dare ya!" between giggles.
The kicker: when Hatena reproduces, one offspring is a peaceful photosynthesizer with the sun-seeking eye, while the other is yet again a predator with a voracious mouth.
While this is extremely interesting, we need a link to the actual journal article, or to some source material, not just a link to a blog. Without that we can only assume this is an attempt to turf slashdot to drive traffic to your blog and generate ad revenues.
Okamoto, N. (2005). A Secondary Symbiosis in Progress? Science, 310 (5746), 287-287 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116125
OKAMOTO, N., & INOUYE, I. (2006). Hatena arenicola gen. et sp. nov., a Katablepharid Undergoing Probable Plastid Acquisition Protist, 157 (4), 401-419 DOI: 10.1016/j.protis.2006.05.011
Also, whereas blogs are freely-available, you need a subscription to read the journal article -- so I think that the way this was done is the best way.
Biology is full of promoter-inhibitor relationships, and this seems like an interesting one. When the algae is inside the protist, the host's "animal" behaviors and anatomy are suppressed, but they clearly remain in a latent state, ready to reactivate after fission. It makes one wonder to what extent chloroplasts remain as endosymbionts versus organelles in genuine plant species. So . . . . . . Does anyone know of any research where chloroplasts were removed from plant cells in culture, to see if the remaining cells revert to some atavistic animal-like exogenous-food-seeking state?
Doesn't happen -- they're endosymbionts. Without chloroplasts/mitochondria regular plant/animal cells can't function -- no electron transport chain. That's why people with mitochondrial myopathy are sick, as their mitochondria don't work properly so they don't make enough ATP. The chloroplasts/mitochondria have outsourced amino acid production (among other things), so without the host, they can't survive.
Plants w/o chloroplasts. I remember something from biology where they keep some corn alive that is hybrid for a critical gene--if missing the chloroplasts don't divide. If self-crossed, one-fourth of the corn is albino and dies as soon as it runs out of stored energy in the seed.
However, see Indian Pipe [wikipedia.org] for a plant that doesn't have chloroplasts.
Yes, you are exactly correct, that sticking chloroplasts into animal cells would be the necessary flip side of that experiment. - I was not referring to turning pine trees into Night of the Living Dead. What would be interesting is to see what would happen to algae under these circumstances, or to cultures of moss cells or flowering plant cells. Pick a popular research plant - tobacco for instance - and then pull the chloroplasts out of a few cells, then stick them into a cell culture medium - e.g. agar petri dishes or mammalian cell culture flasks - and see if they become planktonic, aggressive, nutrient-tropic, or if they start to express cell surface structures or other organelles related to sensing and locomotion. Since the algae are phylogenetically much closer to all of this, it seems plausible that they might revert to animal-like forms and function. - If nobody has ever done these experiments, now would be a good time.
But it's very interesting, nonetheless. The real question is: Does the plant tame the predator, or does the predator domesticate the plant?
Btw, no one tagged this story "symbiosis"? I can't seem to tag stories.
Common ancestry may be independent of similar traits, is his point.
The problem, a common one, is that when a finding is reported, notions commonly understood among practitioners are omitted for brevity, and it can mislead when crossing over to non-practitioners of the fields and others less literate in science. Even worse is sometimes even the practitioners forget the proviso of the implicit notions.
Repeated mention of "correlation is not causation" may be annoying, but do serve a useful purpose, I th
How do you know he's human? All I see is text on my screen.
I see no evidence that any intelligence other than human can compose original, coherent posts to an online forum. So with over 95 percent confidence, posts at or above Score:1 are written by humans.
I see no evidence that any intelligence other than human can compose original, coherent posts to an online forum. So with over 95 percent confidence, posts at or above Score:1 are written by humans.
I see no evidence that any intelligence...posts to an online forum.
At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.
You say this as though "hypothesis" were some kind of weasel word, as though they actually do consider it a fact but are just calling it something else to avoid criticism.
Did it ever occur to you that this is precisely what a hypothesis is, and that the correlation =/= causation thing is the very reason that it is considered a hypothesis? I'm sure that these biologists have some vague idea what they're doing. If they thought that they had hard and fast proof they'd be moving this on to the "theory" stage. The very fact that they call it a hypothesis means that they agree with you.
Every time someone posts a stupid correlation versus causation argument on Slashdot, I want to smack them.
I call this the violence-inducing-argument hypothesis, because suggesting causation would just encourage them.
Sing it, brother!
It's a kind of pseudo-intellectual argument which is, unfortunately, very appealing to geeks. Stupid, ignorant people are prone to assuming that correlation always implies causation (even if they don't know to put it in those words) and drawing conclusions that reasonably intelligent, slightly less ignorant people can clearly see are false. So at some point they read a Philosophy 101 list of logical fallacies on the web, come across "correlation does not imply causation," and think, "Ah hah! That explains what all those stupid people are doing!" At which point it becomes the proverbial hammer for which every problem is a nail.
...
In case it isn't clear: correlation, when calculated to account for confounding factors and observed enough to establish significance, is the only way we have to establish causation in the natural world. It is exactly how every accepted scientific "fact" (i.e., theory, which is as close to fact as science can ever get) was established. Everything you think you know about the way the world works is based on a correlation so significant that nobody seriously expects it to turn out the be an artifact. And that's all we've got.
This is similar to the statement that says correlation does not equal causation. Just because I have brown hair and someone across the country also has brown hair and many other similarities doesn't mean both of us are related. At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.
0) The claim of relatedness is based on a rigorous mathematical theory based on the theory of common descent, graph theory and Levenshtein distance. No competent mathematician in the world objects to these methods.
1) Slashbots are fucking retarded on the subject of statistics, and cannot wrap their puny minds around the concept of Bayesian inference. You better believe correlation God damn CAN show causation in some cases.
PETA will be confused (Score:5, Funny)
Re:PETA will be confused (Score:5, Funny)
Easy solution: they will demand that plants possess the same rights as animals. Since they already demand that animals possess the same rights as humans, it will then follow that they will choose not to eat plant-based food just as they refuse to eat animal-based food (i.e., meat). This will leave them without a source of food, and the smart ones will abandon the cause while the dumb ones will die off.
Parent
Re:PETA will be confused (Score:5, Interesting)
No, not the same rights as humans, just the same rights as pets. Even this is an oversimplification but I think it gets the point across.
The point being that it is not appropriate to speak of animals having all the same rights as humans. I think this is well understood. The right to vote, for example, does not make sense since it presupposes knowledge of language, politics, issues etc. The rights that PETA members ascribe to animals, most basically, are the rights not to suffer and die at the hands of humans. These aren't that far out, when you consider the "arguments" in favor of the suffering and dying.
Parent
Re:PETA will be confused (Score:5, Insightful)
Given PETA's record, your statement is a bit . . . ironic.
http://www.petakillsanimals.com/ [petakillsanimals.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Depending on their region or ethnic diet, having dog or cat meat to eat themselves isn't out of the question.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Carrot Juice is Murder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmK0bZl4ILM [youtube.com]
Scientific American (Score:5, Informative)
For all those interested, Scientific American [scientificamerican.com] has the story.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually once this cell totally integrates this endosymbiotic lifeform (the next step) it might very well become eukaryotic. Ironically that would make it an eukaryotic plant, which would presumably very easily evolve back into a predator.
when Hatena reproduces, one offspring is a peaceful photosynthesizer with the sun-seeking eye, while the other is yet again a predator with a voracious mouth."
The explanation is simple : cell division in the parent organism does not trigger cell division in the endosymbiotic lifeform. That endosymbiotic lifeform might very well be thought of as an infection.
Re:PETA will be confused (Score:5, Funny)
This thing sounds worse than a Politician to me.
Fixed that for you.
Parent
Re:PETA will be confused (Score:4, Funny)
I suspect politicians are simply a colony of these. Their campaigning certainly is preditory, and once they get into office, they become vegetables.
Every 4 years they shed their sessile nature and hit the campaign trail again.
Parent
Re:PETA will be confused (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
journal link (Score:5, Informative)
Public Service Announcement (Score:5, Funny)
This is your creator deity... And this is your creator deity on drugs.
Re:Public Service Announcement (Score:5, Funny)
I've known that since the momemt I heard about the platypus.
I still have this image of God and Devil sitting in a bar at the end of the universe, had a few beer, God doodles the platypus on a napkin and Devil manages to snort out a "dare ya!" between giggles.
Parent
Ugh (Score:5, Funny)
Sound like my wife
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Sound like my wife
What's my father in law doing browsing Slashdot?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
so at least you can bang her sun bathing sister, rite?
Sounds like the foundation for a 5-volume fantasy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like the foundation for a 5-volume fanta (Score:4, Funny)
Please. Not so loud. Fox is looking for a sitcom theme for next season.
Parent
Is this your blog? (Score:5, Insightful)
While this is extremely interesting, we need a link to the actual journal article, or to some source material, not just a link to a blog. Without that we can only assume this is an attempt to turf slashdot to drive traffic to your blog and generate ad revenues.
Re: (Score:2)
It's alright, we killed it.
The site, I mean - not the wacky organism...
Re:Is this your blog? (Score:4, Insightful)
Okamoto, N. (2005). A Secondary Symbiosis in Progress? Science, 310 (5746), 287-287 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116125 OKAMOTO, N., & INOUYE, I. (2006). Hatena arenicola gen. et sp. nov., a Katablepharid Undergoing Probable Plastid Acquisition Protist, 157 (4), 401-419 DOI: 10.1016/j.protis.2006.05.011
Also, whereas blogs are freely-available, you need a subscription to read the journal article -- so I think that the way this was done is the best way.
Parent
Why does this sound so familiar? (Score:2, Funny)
Cordyceps (Score:4, Informative)
Memeaholic (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I for one welcome our new single celled predatory overlords, but deride their single celled hippy photosynthesizing cousins.
Phylumist!
What happens when chloroplasts are removed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Biology is full of promoter-inhibitor relationships, and this seems like an interesting one. When the algae is inside the protist, the host's "animal" behaviors and anatomy are suppressed, but they clearly remain in a latent state, ready to reactivate after fission. It makes one wonder to what extent chloroplasts remain as endosymbionts versus organelles in genuine plant species. So . . .
. . .
Does anyone know of any research where chloroplasts were removed from plant cells in culture, to see if the remaining cells revert to some atavistic animal-like exogenous-food-seeking state?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Doesn't happen -- they're endosymbionts. Without chloroplasts/mitochondria regular plant/animal cells can't function -- no electron transport chain. That's why people with mitochondrial myopathy are sick, as their mitochondria don't work properly so they don't make enough ATP.
The chloroplasts/mitochondria have outsourced amino acid production (among other things), so without the host, they can't survive.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Plants w/o chloroplasts. I remember something from biology where they keep some corn alive that is hybrid for a critical gene--if missing the chloroplasts don't divide. If self-crossed, one-fourth of the corn is albino and dies as soon as it runs out of stored energy in the seed.
However, see Indian Pipe [wikipedia.org] for a plant that doesn't have chloroplasts.
Re: (Score:2)
Human cancer cells can survive outside the body. They act rather differently.
Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, you are exactly correct, that sticking chloroplasts into animal cells would be the necessary flip side of that experiment.
-
I was not referring to turning pine trees into Night of the Living Dead. What would be interesting is to see what would happen to algae under these circumstances, or to cultures of moss cells or flowering plant cells. Pick a popular research plant - tobacco for instance - and then pull the chloroplasts out of a few cells, then stick them into a cell culture medium - e.g. agar petri dishes or mammalian cell culture flasks - and see if they become planktonic, aggressive, nutrient-tropic, or if they start to express cell surface structures or other organelles related to sensing and locomotion. Since the algae are phylogenetically much closer to all of this, it seems plausible that they might revert to animal-like forms and function.
-
If nobody has ever done these experiments, now would be a good time.
Parent
I hate to admit... (Score:5, Funny)
Gives a whole new meaning to... (Score:3, Funny)
OT, but just FYI (Score:5, Informative)
Old news (Score:5, Funny)
A food that, when eaten, transforms an agressive predator into a passive life form....
Wedding cake.
I don't think it's especially weird. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting find... (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but it is pretty strong evidence.
And, in fact, you are related because you share a common ancestor, even if it is many generations removed.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Common ancestry may be independent of similar traits, is his point.
The problem, a common one, is that when a finding is reported, notions commonly understood among practitioners are omitted for brevity, and it can mislead when crossing over to non-practitioners of the fields and others less literate in science. Even worse is sometimes even the practitioners forget the proviso of the implicit notions.
Repeated mention of "correlation is not causation" may be annoying, but do serve a useful purpose, I th
Re: (Score:2)
I should have written:
"Common ancestry may be independent of [a particular] similar trait, is his point."
Re: (Score:2)
And, in fact, you are related because you share a common ancestor, even if it is many generations removed.
Do you know that?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How do you know he's human? All I see is text on my screen.
I see no evidence that any intelligence other than human can compose original, coherent posts to an online forum. So with over 95 percent confidence, posts at or above Score:1 are written by humans.
Re:Interesting find... (Score:5, Insightful)
I see no evidence that any intelligence other than human can compose original, coherent posts to an online forum. So with over 95 percent confidence, posts at or above Score:1 are written by humans.
I see no evidence that any intelligence...posts to an online forum.
Fixed that for you !
Parent
Re:Interesting find... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh my God! You're right! I don't anything for sure.
JESUS CHRIST! What if I'm really a toaster?
I mean, I have a lot of the same qualities as a human being, but that doesn't prove anything. What if I'm supposed to be making toast right now?!?!?
Parent
Re:Interesting find... (Score:5, Funny)
That sounds good, can you make some toast for me please? Someone else here is bound to be a butter knife, so maybe we can get a team effort going?
Parent
Re:Interesting find... (Score:5, Insightful)
You say this as though "hypothesis" were some kind of weasel word, as though they actually do consider it a fact but are just calling it something else to avoid criticism.
Did it ever occur to you that this is precisely what a hypothesis is, and that the correlation =/= causation thing is the very reason that it is considered a hypothesis? I'm sure that these biologists have some vague idea what they're doing. If they thought that they had hard and fast proof they'd be moving this on to the "theory" stage. The very fact that they call it a hypothesis means that they agree with you.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Every time someone posts a stupid correlation versus causation argument on Slashdot, I want to smack them.
I call this the violence-inducing-argument hypothesis, because suggesting causation would just encourage them.
Re:Interesting find... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time someone posts a stupid correlation versus causation argument on Slashdot, I want to smack them.
I call this the violence-inducing-argument hypothesis, because suggesting causation would just encourage them.
Sing it, brother!
It's a kind of pseudo-intellectual argument which is, unfortunately, very appealing to geeks. Stupid, ignorant people are prone to assuming that correlation always implies causation (even if they don't know to put it in those words) and drawing conclusions that reasonably intelligent, slightly less ignorant people can clearly see are false. So at some point they read a Philosophy 101 list of logical fallacies on the web, come across "correlation does not imply causation," and think, "Ah hah! That explains what all those stupid people are doing!" At which point it becomes the proverbial hammer for which every problem is a nail.
...
In case it isn't clear: correlation, when calculated to account for confounding factors and observed enough to establish significance, is the only way we have to establish causation in the natural world. It is exactly how every accepted scientific "fact" (i.e., theory, which is as close to fact as science can ever get) was established. Everything you think you know about the way the world works is based on a correlation so significant that nobody seriously expects it to turn out the be an artifact. And that's all we've got.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
This is similar to the statement that says correlation does not equal causation. Just because I have brown hair and someone across the country also has brown hair and many other similarities doesn't mean both of us are related. At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.
0) The claim of relatedness is based on a rigorous mathematical theory based on the theory of common descent, graph theory and Levenshtein distance. No competent mathematician in the world objects to these methods.
1) Slashbots are fucking retarded on the subject of statistics, and cannot wrap their puny minds around the concept of Bayesian inference. You better believe correlation God damn CAN show causation in some cases.
Re: (Score:2)
They'll sue the scientists for discovering something that infringes.