WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Nov. 3 (UPI) -- Genetic imbalances in plants can predict physical defects, a finding U.S. researchers say suggests how genome organization affects organisms, even humans.
Researchers at Purdue University measured characteristics that vary with imbalances of specific chromosomes, and say understanding how and why imbalances result in certain defects could open the door to correcting them in not only plants, but also in animals and humans, a university release said Wednesday.
A classic example of chromosome imbalance in humans is in Down syndrome, which is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.
"The ability of an organism to replicate and pass on all its genes is incredibly important," Brian Dilkes, a Purdue assistant professor of horticulture, said. "What we've found is that genes are sensitive to their dose relative to the rest of the genome. When that balance is disrupted, the organisms fail."
"By learning the rules, we can predict the outcome of adding or deleting a gene from an organism," Dilkes said.
The researchers were surprised to find that chromosomal imbalance resulted in abnormal traits in offspring even when the offspring had a normal number of chromosomes.
With the normal number of chromosomes, plants descended from plants with chromosome imbalances should have been normal but still displayed abnormal characteristics, they said.
"Something about those chromosomes is different," Dilkes said. "We have no idea what that something is, but it suggests there are multigenerational consequences to changes in chromosome dosage. The DNA sequence says these plants should be perfectly normal, but they are not."
