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Plants, like all living things, need nitrogen to build amino acids and other essential biomolecules. Although nitrogen is the most abundant element in air, the molecular form of nitrogen found there is largely unreactive. To become useful to plants, that nitrogen must first be "fixed," or busted out of its molecular form and linked with hydrogen to make ammonia. The plants can then get at it by catalyzing reactions with ammonia.
But plants can't fix nitrogen. Bacteria can.
Some legumes and a few other plants have a symbiotic relationship with certain bacterial species. The plants build specialized structures on their roots called nodules to house and feed the bacteria, which in turn fix nitrogen for the plants and assure them a steady supply of ammonia. Only 10 families of plants have the ability to do this, and even within these families, most genera opt out. Ever since the symbiosis was discovered in 1888, plant geneticists have wondered: why? If you could ensure a steady supply of nitrogen for use, why wouldn't you?
A global consortium of geneticists sequenced and compared the genomes of 37 plants—some symbiotic, some not; some that build nodules, some not; some agriculturally relevant, some not—to try to find out what was going on. The group's genetic analysis of the conundrum was reported in Science.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:24AM (2 children)
No matter how much repetitive rubbish you submit, it doesn't make it any more attractive. I've just rejected 5 submissions related to the alt-right because none of them say anything new nor would any of them promote an intelligent and enlightening discussion. Why don't you submit them to a more appropriate site? Your acceptance rate of 7 stories out of 117 submissions should tell you something about the only topic that you seem to be able to write a submission on. We are not ignoring or suppressing the topic - but we have discussed it and there is nothing original in what you are offering.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:26AM (1 child)
Tell it to the TMB, janrinok. The Broad Brush is coming for SoylentNews. In fact, we are already painted, and only aristarchus is standing up for the side of reason. Continue, if you want to continue to kill the dream that was BuckFeta!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:50AM
Running the bulk of your alt-right related submissions would have run the site into the ground a long time ago. Even if we cared about the toxic subject matter, most of them are heavily biased or about worthless attention seekers. We don't need to know what Milo or Lauren are doing week to week.
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