I've been researching UV, Gamma and other sorts of mutations that can be used to induce mutations in plants.
I'm also aware that certain chemicals and things can cause mutations in seedlings - seeds and / or grown plants.
I've been making some "mixes" of things that are likely to cause mutations in plants.
Basically, I'd mostly submerge a plant in some of these mixes, continually add more mix samples to it, so that the chemicals don't simply break down.
I could do this with seeds as well, if I do this I'd probably go with minimal soil and continue growing it in some of the mixes.
Soaking cuttings in these liquids might be interesting to do as well.
I might be able to spray flowers and things as well with the chemicals. Soaking might work too.
I'm a bit more worried they'd just abort. Doing liquid mixes of pollen with those chemical mixes could work / be interesting.
There are chemicals that I could just buy, but I figured I'd try some more fun ways.
While I've made some test liquid batches, I haven't used them as I'm indoors and I want to buy gloves, maybe tubes or things, stuff to hold water that I could still seal while the plant also tries using it for water or whatever else.
I've tried grabbing plants with various chemicals and that are usually weedy - plentiful things.
I let them soak in some extra canning jars I have marked solely for this project / experiment. They stay in the jar - I've been doing 4oz ones because I didn't want much or any dilution of the chemicals, less likely to happen with those.
I usually try and know, just what I'm tossing in there.
The goal, is to get decent amounts of things and dilute them altogether. A lot of chemicals found in the leaves of plants break down along with the leaves, soaking them in actual water and without decomposers can help release their unique / rare chemicals into the water.
I use a lot of leaves or whatever else, a single leaf would barely give me any amount of a desired chemical. I've really been smooshing things down.
The general idea, is that plants tend to restore / fix themselves when mutations happen - and it isn't noticed because of how fast they self repair. Usually they self fix on live plants / material.
So, I make the chemical mixes with large amounts of holly berries (ilicin), holly leaves, poinsettia leaves,lichen (usnic acid or vulpinic acid), various mushrooms - mask and other stuff is used for these and only outdoor prepping (pretty much all of it is prepped and done outdoors). Soaked some sleeping tea herbs into some batches, some other things as well. Some sorrel leaves, dandelion flowers, lyreleaf sage leaves - some water hemlock and poison hemlock.
I've also considered throwing pennies or foreign coins that I have lying around into some batches or their own jars to be continually mixed in. A lot of coins of various metal mixes that are different than regular Ni solvable things etc. Silver, that sort of stuff.
Some "rocks" (minerals, Quartz- etc), that I have lying around also tend to produce toxins or interesting chemicals when left to sit in a small glass of water (canning jars should prevent oxidization to some extent for certain chemicals), these may be fun to play with too.
I am making sure that I know what's mostly in the plants, rocks and things before using them.
For example, I knew where a clump of uranium ore was at my old house.
It was a type that was not very profitable or common enough to break down if I recall. I could've broken that stuff down into bits and soaked them in water, sure. But, I'd rather not - I'm also fairly sure that producing some stuff like that isn't legal.
My general thinking is to toss all sorts of stuff like this in high chemical amounts, in amounts not commonly or ever found in nature. Most of these should damage a plants repair systems, others will do the whole mutation thing. I'm fairly sure some, most or all plants could die from some mixtures.
The plants will have to deal with breaking down or guarding against these things, which probably won't be possible.
Not all mutations are observable either. I'm also interested in seeing if anything else happens considering there's DNA, different colored things and the like that will be in there too because of me using plant material - I'm not purely extracting put 100% menthol or single chemicals out of things.
I'll make an area for some tomato plants, just to be used for this experiment.
I'm choose tomatoes, because they are easy to graft or make cuttings of using liquid, they'll be fine with being submerged in water, at least to an extent. And, exserted tomatoes means I may just need to mess with male pollen using the chemicals.
I'll have access to nightshade berries and leaves, 10 ish Salvia species with a lot of diversity in them, probably growing Milk Thistle, some other thistles and medicinal plants - various chemicals.
I'm not using these as compost tea sort of things, these get no soil when they go in or around the plant / plants. Soil means microbes and things to break down these chemicals.
I'm also interested in seeing if some liquids change the colors of a plants stem or things, messes or prevents photosynthesis.
This is mostly just an experiment that I want to try out for the heck of it.
I'm definitely going to be doing it. If others just wanna observe or have hints, safety procedures or tips - those are welcome.
Trying this out on interspecific hybrids would be a secondary goal if this has interesting results.
Rather than pulling out a tomato plant to be culled, or culling a boring line - I'd probably throw it into this bunch of experimental plants.
I'm not planning on using these plants for food. I think I like being alive.
Ha ha ha!
This sounds like fun. I don't want to try it myself because food production is the high priority for me right now, but I'd love to observe. :)
Fun stuff. I've been playing with some similar ideas for the past year on ornamental plants.
Ran into a patent that discussed certain antibiotics being able to induce variegation in soy plants. Apparently plastids, including chloroplasts, are similar enough to certain kinds of bacteria that certain types of antibiotics can be effective in destroying some portion of them. Which makes sense since a few hundred million years back they were probably literally bacteria that became trapped in plant cells.
Got a few dozen monstera deliciosa seeds and soaked groups of them in different amounts of streptomycin (one of the antibiotics listed in the patent) for a little over a week. I germinated those, as well as a group with no streptomycin. Early results seemed promising, with more heavily dosed seedlings being on average more pale with some random blotches obviously making less than the normal amount of chlorophyll. Also notable was that growth was slower the more heavily treated the seeds were, though germination rate stayed the same to marginally better. But after growing a while (by the time the first couple of leaves had hardened off), all the new growth didn't seem to be chloroplast deficient in any of the plants. About 11 months out now and I couldn't tell you the difference between any of the groups if it weren't for the labels. I'm tempted to try again with higher concentrations or longer exposure, but my feeling is it wouldn't stick regardless. Possible spectinomycin would be a better option too, but streptomycin is what I was able to find.
EMS is interesting. That will definitely cause actual genetic changes across the genome in just about anything. Lots of them won't be visible, lots of them will be deadly to the plant, and a handful might be interesting with a large enough batch. But it's messy to handle - it's not just a mutagen in plants, it's a mutagen and carcinogen in mammals, and a pretty aggressive one from what I understand. Been sitting in my cart at Sigma Aldrich for a couple months, I'm tempted play with it but want to be cautious.
Could always follow in the steps of those kids on YouTube and make an x-ray machine and shoot it at some seeds I guess hah
I'm still sort of planning on getting one of those UV-C sterilizers for UV mutation breeding.
Some chemical batches have been interesting.
Add some outdated spices and other things to some batches.
Different chemical mixes and things.
Found some fallen birch logs / branches that have different mushrooms - fungi than oak trees usual stuff.
One batch has standard lichen sorta extract, along with some orange lichen, some different types of moss and mushrooms. Also holly berries, leaves - all sorts of other stuff.
That one, is interesting. By interesting, I mean when I threw in leaves and some other stuff into that mix, they more or less looked half disintegrated the following day. There's a reason I'm careful with this stuff, keep lids and whatnot on them - keep them outside.
I think I threw in two or three types of hemlock into that batch awhile back too.
Might abandon that one as it's a test batch, early one. And, seeing as how it didn't disintegrate things quickly, but took a little while - I have some ideas on what chemicals aren't in there doing stuff due to the time lapse.
As mentioned before, I don't really want to just outright kill a plant. Lichens can possibly stop a tomato plant or things from healing / self repairing themselves. The mushrooms, well yeah. Mushroom chemicals can be interesting. Especially when you throw in like 5 species to dissolve along with fungi / tree / bark mushrooms.
But yeah, safety first when I deal with this stuff.
Was mostly seeing how long the mixture stayed potent / stablish or still usable.
Going on two months I think. That batch, is in a large container, didn't drain out leaves or other things and let them sit there. Probably why it's still potent or whatever.
I am hoping that I can do UV mutation projects one day. Stuff seems expensive.
I'd be really curious to see if mutations or chromosome doubling could restore fertility to crops that are usually (or always?) sterile. Ginger, for instance. But I'd be most interested in the Musa basjoo banana species, which is apparently seedless and always cloned, and I've never heard of anyone successfully breeding with it, so it may be pollen sterile too.
If my Musa basjoo banana ever gives me more pups than I need, do you want me to send you one to try playing with?
I do have one Musa basjoo plant. Thanks though!
The main problem with growing Bananas in the U.S. in terms of the "wild species", is that they aren't self pollinating like commercial types.
A lot of wild species are pollinated by certain species of birds, others by bats.
Bees and things can visit flowers, but not properly pollinate the flowers.
Breeders or U.S. growers usually have to resort to hand pollination if nothing properly pollinates the things.
Sometimes animals or things realize it's a viable food source and are able to pollinate them.
Upright flowers usually get birds as pollinators, drooping ones have bat pollinators.
Bees and sugar gliders, other sorts of things pollinate other species.
I'm gonna see if hummingbirds here will be able to do anything with my basjoo here. Probably a few months till they return.
Oh, interesting! So it may just be a pollination issue? In that case, I should make sure to hand-pollinate all my banana plants. It never occurred to me that they might have trouble getting pollinated outside their native ecosystem. I just assumed bees would pollinate them just fine. That's very helpful to know!
Can heavy metals also mutate plants? Back when I was sampling all of the patches of feral grain I could find (so as to get better data on grains that could thrive in my area with minimal attention), there was one wheat patch I tested (on a sloped garden next to a computer store) where the wheat looked really odd. Many of the stems were twisted like corkscrews, and several plants had multiple heads coming out of the same stem (and since, as far as I know, the odds of some random land contractor using straw from rivet wheat (which, as far as I know, is the only wheat that makes more than one head on a stem naturally) in this day and age is pretty remote, mutated normal wheat seems more likely) Someone said it could have been heavy metal pollution in the ground.
Yeah, metals leave residues and whatnot in the soil.
Nickels, coins and the like can leech out stuff too if stuck in gardens.
At their base, metals are solid chemicals.
Lot of metals can be broken down to other chemicals / metals that plants can use. Then there's the leftover stuff that not all plants can handle or use.
But, yep - those can cause mutations. Usually happens near places that have old mines that flood or didn't clean up after themselves properly.
Sunflowers and other plants are usually used for many years in places like that - their foliage gets disposed of afterwards.
The stems and things basically absorb the harmful components. Can't leave them lay or they go right back into the soil.
Some plants are "OK" to grow in contaminated soil and still harvest. Usually depends on certain things.
I've been considering using rusty nails I've found, sticking them in water and using them on plants. Once again, I wouldn't be eating anything - won't even touch the liquids - special gloves and the like.
I'm mostly going to be staying away from letting any of this go directly into the soil around the plants I'm using. Tomatoes can and will make roots if I make something around their base that holds water, not soil. Would need to make it high enough that dirt / soil doesn't flood in.
Still planning things out.
Microbes and things would probably dilute the chemicals too. Make them less harmful. There's still microbes for water too I guess.
Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2023-01-20, 12:24:25 PMI'm still sort of planning on getting one of those UV-C sterilizers for UV mutation breeding.
I got one, though didn't use it yet.
For DIY mutagenesis, seems like the way to go. Make a radiation chest with the UVC lamp, put some fresh mature pollen in it, close the box and turn on the lamp for a moment, take the pollen out and pollinate stuff with it.
That said, mutagenesis is not super practical. Most mutations are deletrious, and most of the rest are hard to predict and observe. And it typically requires growing out a lot of seedlings.
You could also go for callus culture and aiming for somaclonal improvements. But that shares most of the same limitations. More practical than pollen irradiation for perennial cultivars, though.
As for heavy metals, they, along with a ton of other environmental factors can cause stress in the plant. These are unlikely to affect the DNA and be heritable traits. Trying to rescue some specimens on good substrate would give you a hint, by observing whether the new growth continues as it was or starts reverting to a more healthy appearance.
The metals would be to stunt the plants self repair mechanisms rather than cause mutations themselves.
Same with some other chemicals.
Some chemicals seem like they can make rapid random mutations in multiple places / genes / chromosomes.
I'd prefer causing mutations that effect seeds - that way I don't need cuttings for mutations that are highly likely to not come true to seed.
Different ways of doing mutations and the like.
I've read some reports that mention chemical mutants. But, it seems like UV radiation appeared around the time of some of those studies.
Making chemicals can be expensive, lot of trial and error on what kills vs doesn't kill vs alive just enough to make fruit and seed.
UV radiation is more cut and dry, less expensive and whatnot.
There's not much literature on UV radiation, though. There is some, but the labs with the fancy expensive equipment prefer other kinds of radiation. UVC seems to do the job just fine for us plebes, though. At least for tissue culture. Gamma radiation might irradiate through the seed shell, but I don't think UVC would penetrate much. Hence why it'd need to be used on pollen, ideally, or otherwise maybe meristems.
UV mutations in pollen are the most likely to lead to a uniform mutation throughout the resulting plant. It is also less hazardous than handling chemicals, provided you keep the UV light inside a chamber during use. If you mutate a whole seed or piece of plant. You are mostly inducing point mutations, which are most likely to lead to loss of function of a particular protein in the end. This can be a useful way to turn off a gene that contributes to an unwanted trait like toxin production.