New answers tagged flora
1
Most likely boring case: it gradually gets eliminated through the same processes that normally take care of the circulating free DNA released by ordinary means
Somewhat unlikely bad case: it triggers some immune reaction if the recipient is unlucky enough. Since the foreign substance is in the bloodstream it's likely not going to be fun. Although this might ...
4
Semi-tangential response.
You explicitly ask about DNA. You could, instead ask about RNA. In which case, it is reported that plant RNA ingested in food can migrate into tissues and alter gene expression. No injection needed. (The picture for microRNA dietary uptake has become more complicated since the cited report, but has not been refuted.)
8
I will suppose you mean gene injection through genetic therapy, possibly CRISPR-Cas, not merely dropping naked DNA on the blood stream.
Well, we already have plant genes.
Plants and animals have a common ancestor. They branched out in the tree of life about 850 million years ago, give or take. Probably on a Tuesday.
In evolutionary science, genes shared by ...
14
DNA is a very stable compound. Unlike proteins, which get involved in all sorts of interesting reactions. DNA just sits there. It doesn't start replicating itself or synthesing proteins or doing any of the interesting stuff unless you supply it with a whole cell's worth of machinery.
When DNA was first discovered (and before Rosalind Crick and Watson ...
4
Cyanobacteria consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen as a waste product. They require water, sunlight and a few nutrients, but they do not require any oxygen at any point of their photosynthetic cycle so they could be a good starting point.
One possible candidate for your “plants” if you want to base them on Earth life forms would be Nostoc pruniforme ...
42
It would have little to no effect if it was just "injected", since at that point it would just be harmless nucleotides. It would be captured and digested by lymphocytes.
It is possible that it might trigger an allergic reaction (but unlikely, since DNA is, well, DNA. Humans have it too).
To have an effect, the DNA would need to be injected inside ...
8
DNA viruses exists and our immune system responds to them. I don't think it would be any different if it is a plant DNA. Thus, in the end, it will have minimal effect on the host. The only effect I can think of is immune system response, fever, increased white blood cells, etc...
2
Hot days and hot nights implies to me that much of the planet is in a humid environment with a strong greenhouse effect. Normally, dry air and soil heated by the sun during the day will lose most of that heat back out to space during night, but this loss can be slowed by a stronger greenhouse effect or higher local humidity (water vapor is great at holding ...
10
My comment as an addition to Logan R. Kearsley was too complex, but see this as an addition to his answer.
It would make it more difficult for a mushroom to grow into a treelike structure than a lichen. They draw energy most often from either living things or the decaying matter. That means it requires a constant source of other living things to grow, while ...
38
They did.
Now, the first trees evolved on Earth right around the same time that Prototaxites went extinct, so perhaps trees just out-compete them and they really can't co-exist... but it's not entirely obvious why Prototaxites disappeared when trees showed up. If they were actually lichens, relying on photosynthesis from their algal component to survive, ...
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