The latest research results of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences have shocked the academic community:The mother of potatoes is actually tomatoes.Huang Sanwen's team from the Shenzhen Institute of Agricultural Genomics, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and Chinese and foreign research teams published a research paper in Cell.
This study reveals for the first time the origin of hybridization, tuber formation and radiation differentiation of the potato group. Research has found that the potato group originated from an ancient hybridization event between the tomato group and the potato group 9 million years ago.
To put it simply,Potatoes are a hybrid of Solanum tuberosum and Tomato. According to the genetic relationship of the plastid genome, tomato is the female parent and potato is the male parent.
You know, potatoes only have underground stems and no enlarged potato tubers, while tomatoes have neither underground stems nor tubers, so why do their hybrids grow potato tubers?
The research team further discovered that this was an organ accidentally created by genome recombination.
The related genes that control the function of potato tubers are derived from tomatoes and potatoes. The lack of any gene will affect the normal development of potato tubers.
Ancient hybridization events drive tuber formation and radiation evolution in potato lineages