The Genome of the Rose
February 16, 2019 10:41 AM Subscribe
The rose genome has recently been completely sequenced, which should lead to much faster and easier development of traits such as fragrance, colour, and healthiness - maybe even thornless varieties.
Because of centuries of breeding, most of the modern rose cultivars have four copies of genes, two from each parent — rather than the more typical one from each parent.
I'm curious about how polyploidy is a function of breeding.
posted by srboisvert at 11:44 AM on February 16, 2019
I'm curious about how polyploidy is a function of breeding.
posted by srboisvert at 11:44 AM on February 16, 2019
Polyploidy is sometimes deliberately induced by breeders to create plants which are larger, more robust, faster-growing, etc. than the originals. And then the polyploids get crossed with one another, and voilà, most modern cvv. are tetraploids.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 12:04 PM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Spathe Cadet at 12:04 PM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]
Next, they will be breeding cowboys without sad sad songs. Is there anything these “scientists” won’t tamper with?
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:09 PM on February 16, 2019 [42 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:09 PM on February 16, 2019 [42 favorites]
But... I thought every rose has its thorn 🧐
posted by ShawnStruck at 12:09 PM on February 16, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by ShawnStruck at 12:09 PM on February 16, 2019 [4 favorites]
Kind of takes the romance out of it for me. I thought tending your rose bushes was part of the fun. A reliably perfect flower feels pretty bland and boring.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:10 PM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:10 PM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think I actually have never encountered a rose that smelled like anything at all. Like, both the "stop and smell the roses" thing and the "roses smell like crap" thing have never made any sense to me, because in my experience they always seem to smell like Some Random Chunk Of Plant and never like anything interesting.
So now I'm wondering if I've just never been around old ones that hadn't had the fragrance bred out of them.
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:32 PM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]
So now I'm wondering if I've just never been around old ones that hadn't had the fragrance bred out of them.
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:32 PM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]
There is a street in Edinburgh where somebody has a garden with roses draped over the wall, so they are above your head as you walk past. They smell amazing, and every other rose has been a disappointment to me since. Colours schmolours, scent is where it's at.
posted by stillnocturnal at 12:50 PM on February 16, 2019 [11 favorites]
posted by stillnocturnal at 12:50 PM on February 16, 2019 [11 favorites]
We don't need more foofy roses with foofy names. The ones that grow wild -- those are roses.
posted by sageleaf at 12:51 PM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by sageleaf at 12:51 PM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]
Don't fret, even the kinds of things they can do now they they have a genome still won't change how important tending your rose bushes is, or even the breeding processes. Plants translate amounts of sun, water, nitrogen, and phosphorus into flowers and nectaries. They can't make "perfectly reliable flowers" without perfectly reliable tending. Easier, maybe, a little more tolerant? But it's hard to imagine how a rose bush could become, say, more drought tolerant AND have bigger, fluffier flowers with strong scent. Developmental tradeoffs are just a thing!
Part of what's super fun about this article is that it's not just a rose genome, it's several different rose genomes. Genomes are becoming so cheap to produce and assembly methods so rigorous that you don't have to stop with just one, and you get so much more information out of many genomes than out of one.
It's still extremely hard though! There are so many authors on this paper!!! And I promise you that they all truly contributed. Not necessarily just with the molecular work, probably many of them never even touched a rose for the purposes of this study. Still and all, in just twenty years we've come sooooo far from the 2.7 billion dollar, ten-year human genome project.
I'm so jealous of their long single molecule reads. I want some. Those are really the game changer, because the long single molecule sequences can let you figure out the frustrating repetitive parts of the genome that a computer cannot figure out. Like, if I gave you the sentence fragments "colorless green", "green ideas sleep", "sleep furiously", you can put that sentence together even though it's silly. But if I give you "buffalo buffalo", "buffalo buffalo buffalo", "buffalo buffalo", you cannot predict even how many words are in that sentence unless you know it already. Previously (when I started grad school!!) we could only sequence tiny fragments at once (100 bases); now we can sequence like, 40,000 bases at once. It's astonishing.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 1:03 PM on February 16, 2019 [14 favorites]
Part of what's super fun about this article is that it's not just a rose genome, it's several different rose genomes. Genomes are becoming so cheap to produce and assembly methods so rigorous that you don't have to stop with just one, and you get so much more information out of many genomes than out of one.
It's still extremely hard though! There are so many authors on this paper!!! And I promise you that they all truly contributed. Not necessarily just with the molecular work, probably many of them never even touched a rose for the purposes of this study. Still and all, in just twenty years we've come sooooo far from the 2.7 billion dollar, ten-year human genome project.
I'm so jealous of their long single molecule reads. I want some. Those are really the game changer, because the long single molecule sequences can let you figure out the frustrating repetitive parts of the genome that a computer cannot figure out. Like, if I gave you the sentence fragments "colorless green", "green ideas sleep", "sleep furiously", you can put that sentence together even though it's silly. But if I give you "buffalo buffalo", "buffalo buffalo buffalo", "buffalo buffalo", you cannot predict even how many words are in that sentence unless you know it already. Previously (when I started grad school!!) we could only sequence tiny fragments at once (100 bases); now we can sequence like, 40,000 bases at once. It's astonishing.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 1:03 PM on February 16, 2019 [14 favorites]
You know what fun thing is relatively easy with a full genome? Fluorescent roses. Those are gonna have to be coming out soon.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 1:03 PM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 1:03 PM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
Oh what's wrong with me. Of course they already have.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 1:05 PM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 1:05 PM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]
We don't need more foofy roses with foofy names. The ones that grow wild -- those are roses.
posted by sageleaf at 3:51 PM on February 16
This is the kind of attitude I have come to expect from herbs.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:11 PM on February 16, 2019 [21 favorites]
posted by sageleaf at 3:51 PM on February 16
This is the kind of attitude I have come to expect from herbs.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:11 PM on February 16, 2019 [21 favorites]
"foofy roses with foofy names" is my next metafilter username
posted by nebulawindphone at 1:18 PM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by nebulawindphone at 1:18 PM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]
we need roses that taste like cider and cheese
get on it genome nerds
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:57 PM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]
get on it genome nerds
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:57 PM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]
Now that the rose genome has been sequenced, can we please have a true blue rose, at last? And of course it has to be very, very fragrant!
posted by Lynsey at 2:07 PM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Lynsey at 2:07 PM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]
Made of Star Stuff, if we could include images I’d show you unboxing photos from my new GridION...single reads over immune gene loci, here we come!
posted by wintermind at 2:10 PM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by wintermind at 2:10 PM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is the kind of attitude I have come to expect from herbs.
#NotAllHerbs
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:11 PM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]
#NotAllHerbs
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:11 PM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]
Sage is very judgmental true- but I find parsley very free spirited and oregano has a open mind in all things.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:19 PM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:19 PM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]
Two highly scented roses grow in abundance around here: beach rose (Rosa rugosa) and multiflora rose (R. multiflora). Unfortunately they are both alien and invasive, the latter especially so. They smell delicious though.
posted by Botanizer at 2:27 PM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Botanizer at 2:27 PM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]
It's not on youtube anymore, but ya'll might be interested in Audrey Hepburn's documentary series on gardens, which includes an episode on roses. A trailer.
posted by el io at 2:48 PM on February 16, 2019
posted by el io at 2:48 PM on February 16, 2019
This is probably more an AskMefi question, but I really REALLY want to keep roses (rather than just buy them every other week). Red roses are my absolute favourite flower. However, I live in an apartment with no garden and kinda suck at gardening anyway.
Are there options that could work for me? Would this genome information lead to growing black-thumb-friendly beginner roses?
(I live in Melbourne, Australia if that makes some difference. I've looked up rose grower sites but just get super confused)
posted by divabat at 3:14 PM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
Are there options that could work for me? Would this genome information lead to growing black-thumb-friendly beginner roses?
(I live in Melbourne, Australia if that makes some difference. I've looked up rose grower sites but just get super confused)
posted by divabat at 3:14 PM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
You're right el io, I've watched that entire series and it certainly beats Monty Don (although he's good too).
posted by blue shadows at 3:24 PM on February 16, 2019
posted by blue shadows at 3:24 PM on February 16, 2019
A rose by any other ACGT would smell as sweet, but if it's AGTC would it smell like lillies?
posted by sammyo at 4:41 PM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by sammyo at 4:41 PM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think I actually have never encountered a rose that smelled like anything at all.
This summer, go to your local rose garden and check out some of the scented varieties (they are usually labelled as such)
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 12:02 AM on February 17, 2019
This summer, go to your local rose garden and check out some of the scented varieties (they are usually labelled as such)
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 12:02 AM on February 17, 2019
Double Delight (my favorite, currently a bush is just in front of my door), and Fragrant Cloud are two that I planted back in the 1980s.
It's been a while since I went rose-happy and dug a bunch of flower beds in the front yard. But that Double Delight is staying, even when it snags my jacket as I pass by.
posted by TrishaU at 1:07 AM on February 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
It's been a while since I went rose-happy and dug a bunch of flower beds in the front yard. But that Double Delight is staying, even when it snags my jacket as I pass by.
posted by TrishaU at 1:07 AM on February 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
This is probably more an AskMefi question, but I really REALLY want to keep roses (rather than just buy them every other week). Red roses are my absolute favourite flower. However, I live in an apartment with no garden and kinda suck at gardening anyway.
You can grow Adenium (colloquially known as Desert Rose ) indoors right next to a bright window. It also has the advantage of requiring very little attention (weekly watering only) compared to what attempting indoor rose cultivation would entail (I think it would be close to impossible unless you willing to invest indoor pot levels of effort).
posted by srboisvert at 6:23 AM on February 17, 2019
You can grow Adenium (colloquially known as Desert Rose ) indoors right next to a bright window. It also has the advantage of requiring very little attention (weekly watering only) compared to what attempting indoor rose cultivation would entail (I think it would be close to impossible unless you willing to invest indoor pot levels of effort).
posted by srboisvert at 6:23 AM on February 17, 2019
Thornless varieties of roses already exist. I have a Zephirine Drouhin, which was hybridized in 1868, and I've never seen a thorn on it. (Plus its flowers are fantastically fragrant.)
posted by Lycaste at 3:59 PM on February 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Lycaste at 3:59 PM on February 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
> So now I'm wondering if I've just never been around old ones that hadn't had the fragrance bred out of them.
Yep. The ones you see in florists' are bred to be long-lasting, in a variety of neat colors, with sturdy stems...they just smell like a plant. Sometimes the pink ones still retain a discernible, if demure, rose scent.
Go to a rose garden and stick your face in the old-fashioned varieties. They're often smaller fluffy roses on shorter stems with slightly disheveled petals. Somewhere in the peach/pink color range is very common.
posted by desuetude at 6:14 PM on February 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
Yep. The ones you see in florists' are bred to be long-lasting, in a variety of neat colors, with sturdy stems...they just smell like a plant. Sometimes the pink ones still retain a discernible, if demure, rose scent.
Go to a rose garden and stick your face in the old-fashioned varieties. They're often smaller fluffy roses on shorter stems with slightly disheveled petals. Somewhere in the peach/pink color range is very common.
posted by desuetude at 6:14 PM on February 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
ShawnStruck: "But... I thought every rose has its thorn 🧐"
Cue Mecano's excellent song «Una rosa es una rosa»:
Cue Mecano's excellent song «Una rosa es una rosa»:
I wanted to takeposted by andycyca at 10:00 AM on February 18, 2019
the loveliest rose in the rosebush,
confident that my love
could prevent me from pricking
And while it was pricking
it taught me one thing,
that a rose is a rose is a rose...
« Older Drowning in Debt | Soothing Saturday Sharing Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by eirias at 10:56 AM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]