Newsgroups: sci.bio
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From: ouellett@newsserver.sfu.ca (Francis Ouellette)
Subject: Re: Cancer in plants?
Message-ID: <1991Apr23.034654.6653@newsserver.sfu.ca>
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
References: <3442@beguine.UUCP> <1991Apr22.232650.2061@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 91 03:46:54 GMT

In <1991Apr22.232650.2061@midway.uchicago.edu> lecl@quads.uchicago.edu (elizabeth e. leclair) writes:

>In article <3442@beguine.UUCP> rhunt@med.unc.edu (Rick Hunt) writes:
>>Several days ago on the way to work I saw a strange growth on a tree.  It
   [stuff cut out]
>>Rick Hunt
>>rhunt@med.unc.edu

elizabeth e. leclair (lecl@quads.uchicago.edu) responds:
>   I am not a botanist, but I recall that plants do exhibit "cancers" in
>  the form of growths or "galls" that often appear like large warts on stems
>  or the trunks of trees.  These are essentially rampant cell lines which
   [stuff cut out]
>  rampant cell lines have some interference with their regulatory growth
>  hormones, which might explain the strange proliferation of little twigs 
>  on the tree.

I am not a botanist either, but I did work in a plant lab a few years
ago and it is indeed a plant hormone (phytohormone, some, but not all,
will say) imbalance which is caused by the transfer of cytokinin
producing genes which are transfered from a bacterium responsible for
this gall.  The bacterum gets its advantage here by also transferring an
opine producing gene.  Opines are wierd (read "different") amino acid
which only these bacterium can utilize.  So the bacteria transfer the
hormone gene and the opine making gene to the plant, the plant goes
crazy and devides a lot, makes a lot of opines and makes an ideal
environment for the barcteria to grow, but making the plant sick (but
not killing it) in the meantime, because the plant is routting all of
its nutrients to this part of its trunk which is undergoing cell
division like crazy!

my $0.02 too!

ttul,

francis

>   Just a non-botanist's 2 cents.
> --
> >>>>>>>>   Elizabeth E. LeClair   [lecl@midway.uchicago.edu]  <<<<<<<<<<<
>  I can't remember which brand of beer gets me girls and which merely 
>  submerges me in a mountain stream. -- S.P.
-- 
Francis Ouellette            "Je cherche a` comprendre"   
Dept of Biological Sciences               Jacques Monod
Simon Fraser University		   ouellett@whistler.sfu.ca 
Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6        userBFFO@SFU.bitnet