According to a new study, published today in Science, a parasitic plant called the strangleweed is capable of not only sucking out genetic material from the host plant it invades, but also injecting its own genetic material into its host. The typical way that plants communicate is through chemicals that they release through their leaves and roots, says James Westwood, a plant physiologist at Harvard University and a co-author of the study. So to find out that there is an exchange of RNA — the intermediary form of genetic information that fills the gap between DNA and proteins — is a new concept that hasn’t been explored at all. Beyond the novelty of this finding, however, lie the potential agricultural applications, Westwood says.
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