"We don't know sh*t about biology." - Craig Ventner, one of the unravellers of the human genome

While we're told the existence of an unorthodox inheritance system... "opens up a mind-boggling world of possibilities and proves that genetics is still a young science", adding a level of biological complexity that had never previously been appreciated, note the already burgeoning hubris:

"Scientists predicted that by harnessing the still mysterious mechanism they would be able to control plant diseases and create novel varieties of crops."
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Studies find plants can self-correct genetic flaws
http://www.keralanext.com/news/readnext,1.asp?id=159702&pg=2

Plants inherit secret stashes of genetic information from their long-dead ancestors and can use them to correct errors in their own genes -- a startling capacity for DNA editing and self-repair wholly unanticipated by modern genetics, researchers said yesterday.

The newly discovered phenomenon, which resembles the caching of early versions of a computer document for viewing later on, allows plants to archive copies of genes from generations ago, long assumed to be lost forever.

Then, in a move akin to choosing their parents, plants can apparently retrieve selected bits of code from that archive and use them to overwrite the genes they've inherited directly. The process could offer survival advantages to plants suddenly burdened with new mutations or facing environmental threats for which the older genes were better adapted.

Scientists predicted that by harnessing the still mysterious mechanism they would be able to control plant diseases and create novel varieties of crops. [!!] If the mechanism can be invoked in animals, as some tantalized scientists now venture may be possible, it could also offer a revolutionary way to correct the genetic flaws that lead to cancer and other diseases.

The team has not found the templates, but evidence suggests they are pieces of RNA, a molecular cousin of DNA that can be inherited separately from the chromosomes that carry the primary genetic code in cells.

''We think this demonstrates that there's this parallel path of inheritance that we've overlooked for 100 years, and that's pretty cool," said Robert Pruitt, a professor of botany and plant pathology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., who oversaw the studies with co-worker Susan Lolle.

The finding represents a ''spectacular discovery," wrote German molecular biologists Detlef Weigel and Gerd Jurgens in a commentary accompanying the research in the March 24 issue of the journal Nature, released yesterday.

The existence of an unorthodox inheritance system does not overturn the basic rules of genetics worked out by Austrian monk Gregor Mendel at the turn of the last century, they noted. But like a newly discovered room in a mansion of treasures, it opens up a mind-boggling world of possibilities and proves that genetics is still a young science.

''It adds a level of biological complexity and flexibility we hadn't appreciated," said Lolle. (Agencies)