Rick
Well-Known Member
Are they "weak" or "non-conforming"?
It's interesting in my toxicity work. We work with water fleas. They are parthenogenic, and we narrow the base with every generation by starting new colonies from a single females' offspring. A colony lasts 14 days, so you get lots of generations' DNA narrowed over a course of a year. These are true genetic clones.
Here's the interesting part. The 48 hours LC50 for NaCl is 2 grams per liter +/_ 20%. The definition of LC50 is the concentration were 50% of the organisms die by 48 hours.
So in the 2 gram per liter exposure, without fail every month over the last 17 years I've been in the lab doing this test, 10 of 20 water fleas die. But 10 don't. But if they were 100% genetically identical then how come its not all or nothing?
So now compare the genetic diversity of a flask of seedlings (even from a f2 or f3 selfing) to the water flea, and expose them to an un-naturally high level of potassium salts.
At some point you are going to see an LC50 or IC25 (thats' the concentration that causes a sublethal inhibition, like stunted growth, to 25% of the test organisms).
Maybe we can eventually grow an orchid with kidneys, but until that time we will always see a significant percentage of non conforming offspring to the un-natural chemical pressures we impose on our plants.
It's interesting in my toxicity work. We work with water fleas. They are parthenogenic, and we narrow the base with every generation by starting new colonies from a single females' offspring. A colony lasts 14 days, so you get lots of generations' DNA narrowed over a course of a year. These are true genetic clones.
Here's the interesting part. The 48 hours LC50 for NaCl is 2 grams per liter +/_ 20%. The definition of LC50 is the concentration were 50% of the organisms die by 48 hours.
So in the 2 gram per liter exposure, without fail every month over the last 17 years I've been in the lab doing this test, 10 of 20 water fleas die. But 10 don't. But if they were 100% genetically identical then how come its not all or nothing?
So now compare the genetic diversity of a flask of seedlings (even from a f2 or f3 selfing) to the water flea, and expose them to an un-naturally high level of potassium salts.
At some point you are going to see an LC50 or IC25 (thats' the concentration that causes a sublethal inhibition, like stunted growth, to 25% of the test organisms).
Maybe we can eventually grow an orchid with kidneys, but until that time we will always see a significant percentage of non conforming offspring to the un-natural chemical pressures we impose on our plants.