Flesh-Eating Plant Cleaned Junk From Its Minimalist Genome

>And since DNA’s backbone is loaded with phosphorus, it’s reasonable to think that the plant would have evolved to have less DNA, so it can make do with less of this element.

>But not so. Instead, the team thinks that the answer probably involves recombination[...] Perhaps recombination is exceptionally sloppy in the bladderwort, leading to a natural tendency to delete its DNA.

Why is this presented as an alternative? Surely it makes sense that the low-phosphorus environment would lead the bladderwort to evolve a "sloppy recombination mechanism", that would shorten its DNA without damaging its function.

The original paper is at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...

This plant is more interesting and bizarre than any sci-fi writer's imagination, the Wikipedia description is fascinating but also gave me the shivers: "Lloyd devoted several studies to the possibility, often recounted but never previously accounted for under scientific conditions, that Utricularia can consume larger prey such as young tadpoles and mosquito larvae by catching them by the tail, and ingesting them bit by bit."

Think of a mutant variety of this plant with 1m bladders: it can trap a swimmer and ingest them over the course of a few days! I wonder if there's a theoretical limit to how big they can get.

I disagree. The amount of DNA you have will affect the rate of mutation. Mutations are mostly a bad thing, however, in an environment where a species must constantly create defenses against parasites or disease, it's important to mutate new defenses. As a result, in a low disease/parasite environment it makes sense to get rid of "junk dna" to reduce the rate of mutation, while in a high disease/parasite environment it makes sense to increase "junk dna" to increase it.

Red Queen is a good read on this topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis

http://www.amazon.com/The-Red-Queen-Evolution-Nature/dp/0060...

Isn't it a little too premature to be stating that such item does nothing just because we don't know what it does? I feel like this should be stated with caution after the mislabeling of the tonsils, pineal gland, and thymus as vestigial.

Ed Yong has long been one of the best science writers around.

DNA is bytecode for some VM, and the junk is uninitialized HEAP. Maybe.