Saturday, April 13, 2019

Creation Moment 4/14/2019 - Cucumber Lesson

Example of genetic variation based on the building blocks of the Creator pre-programed in even plants.
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:12

"In an effort to identify the genetic basis of fruit length variation in cucumber, a team of researchers led by Xiaolan Zhang at China Agricultural University analyzed 150 cucumber lines with different fruit lengths.


They identified two variants of a gene named CsFUL1 that differed by a single base pair in the DNA code.
---The CsFUL1A variant appeared in long-fruited East Asian cucumbers,
---whereas the CsFUL1C variant was randomly distributed in wild and semi-wild cucumber populations.

The researchers demonstrated that decreased expression of CsFUL1A was responsible for longer fruit, whereas shorter fruit was caused by increased expression of the A variant, or by the C variant at this locus, which they showed is not fully functional. Therefore, the authors concluded that CsFUL1A functions as a repressor of fruit length that emerged during selection of Asian long cucumber. They further showed that CsFUL1A directly
represses the expression of CsSUP, a known regulator of cell expansion and division. In addition, the expression of two auxin transporter genes, CsPIN1 and CsPIN7, was found to be directly inhibited by CsFUL1A, leading to reduced accumulation of the growth hormone auxin.

This research has singled out a key modulator of fruit length and sets the stage for developing strategies to manipulate fruit length in cucumber breeding."
Phys.Org