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Attention sports fans! The far-reaching contributions of bud sport mutants to horticulture and plant biology
Horticulture Research (2018) 5:44, DOI 10.1038/s41438-018-0062-x
In botany
Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...
, a sport or bud sport, traditionally called ''lusus'', is a part of a plant that shows morphological differences from the rest of the plant. Sports may differ by foliage shape or color, flowers
Flowers, also known as blooms and blossoms, are the reproductive structures of flowering plants ( angiosperms). Typically, they are structured in four circular levels, called whorls, around the end of a stalk. These whorls include: calyx, m ...
, fruit, or branch
A branch, also called a ramus in botany, is a stem that grows off from another stem, or when structures like veins in leaves are divided into smaller veins.
History and etymology
In Old English, there are numerous words for branch, includ ...
structure. The cause is generally thought to be chance genetic mutations in a single cell. Sports may also arise from stable changes in gene expression due to epigenetic
In biology, epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression that happen without changes to the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix ''epi-'' (ἐπι- "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are "on top of" or "in ...
modifications, including histone modification, DNA methylation
DNA methylation is a biological process by which methyl groups are added to the DNA molecule. Methylation can change the activity of a DNA segment without changing the sequence. When located in a gene promoter (genetics), promoter, DNA methylati ...
, chromatin remodeling
Chromatin remodeling is the dynamic modification of chromatin architecture to allow access of condensed genomic DNA to the regulatory transcription machinery proteins, and thereby control gene expression. Such remodeling is principally carried out ...
and RNA silencing
RNA silencing or RNA interference refers to a family of gene silencing effects by which gene expression is negatively regulated by non-coding RNAs such as microRNAs. RNA silencing may also be defined as sequence-specific regulation of gene expressi ...
. If the clonal descendants of a modified cell eventually form a meristem that gives rise to new plant parts, those may be of a new phenotype. Often only part of the meristem cells are affected, resulting in genetic chimerism in such sports.
Horticulture
Sports with desirable characteristics may be grown into new plants byvegetative reproduction
Vegetative reproduction (also known as vegetative propagation, vegetative multiplication or cloning) is a form of asexual reproduction occurring in plants in which a new plant grows from a fragment or cutting of the parent plant or specializ ...
and are often propagated as new cultivars
A cultivar is a kind of cultivated plant that people have selected for desired traits and which retains those traits when propagated. Methods used to propagate cultivars include division, root and stem cuttings, offsets, grafting, tissue cult ...
that retain the characteristics of the new morphology. Such selections are often prone to "reversion", meaning that part or all of the plant reverts to its original form. An example of a bud sport is the nectarine
The peach (''Prunus persica'') is a deciduous tree first domesticated and cultivated in China. It bears edible juicy fruits with various characteristics, most called peaches and the glossy-skinned, non-fuzzy varieties called nectarines. Peach ...
, at least some of which developed as a bud sport from peaches. Other common fruits resulting from a sport mutation are the red Anjou pear, the Ruby Red grapefruit, and the variegated pink lemon, which is a sport of the "Eureka" lemon.
The use of spontaneous mutations in plant breeding may avoid certain challenges associated with breeding by sexual recombination, like heterozygosity
Zygosity (the noun, zygote, is from the Greek "yoked," from "yoke") () is the degree to which both copies of a chromosome or gene have the same genetic sequence. In other words, it is the degree of similarity of the alleles in an organism.
Mos ...
and sexual incompatibilities. Since usually only (very) few alleles are affected, most of the traits of the original cultivar are retained.DOI 10.1016/j.scienta.2022.110979
See also
*Mosaic (genetics)
Mosaicism or genetic mosaicism is a condition in which a multicellular organism possesses more than one genetic line as the result of genetic mutation. This means that various genetic lines resulted from a single fertilized egg. Mosaicism i ...
* Macapuno, also called "coconut sport", a mutation that is, however, not necessarily a sport
External links
*Toshi M. Foster, Maria José Aranzana, 2018Attention sports fans! The far-reaching contributions of bud sport mutants to horticulture and plant biology
Horticulture Research (2018) 5:44, DOI 10.1038/s41438-018-0062-x
References
Plant morphology Mutation Horticulture {{Plant-morphology-stub