why does leaf.. make another plant
okay so a quick basic cell bio thing: cells can develop into different kinds of tissues, made to do different kinds of jobs. this is true with all living things, and the process of turning from a new cell with the potential to turn into anything into a cell With A Special Shape And Job is called differentiation and/or ‘cell fate’.Â
this is why stem cells are such a big deal; in humans, the fates of our cell types are very set and differentiated in most of our bodies, and unless it’s cancerous or otherwise Not Right there will never be a chance for like, one tissue to turn into a radically different kind of tissue. you’ll probably never have a swath of your arm start growing in as intestinal cells unless something is like, Super Wrong. this is because 99.9% of your cells as an adult person, while functioning properly, physically cannot make any other kind of cell.Â
stem cells are cells that can create new cells, and as embryos our bodies are pretty much all stem cells with the potential to turn into any tissue as needed in the body; this is called being totipotent, and from my understanding it’s kind of the holy grail as human medicine goes (imagine being able to grow an entirely new organ/swath of tissue that won’t be rejected by the immune system!). almost as valuable are pluripotent stem cells, which we have as fetuses, that are slightly restricted in what kinds of things they can turn into but still have a wide range of what they can create.
there are different kind of potencies from there, all indicating the abilities of different cells to make different kinds of cells, but what’s important to know is that in humans, by the time we’re born all that is pretty much set and we dont have many remaining stem cells, and the ones we do have can only make one or two different kinds of tissues (called being multipotent).Â
the nature of life of a plant is radically different from an animal, and is way more…dynamic, i suppose, meaning that…man i’d say probably 95% of plant cells are either totipotent or pluripotent. the only kinds of cells that are 100% not able to maybe turn into something fucked up are ones that have developed very complex structures or firm cell walls, or, more than that, are dead (xylem tracheary elements and bark cells come to mind). if you’re a big beefy stone cell boy and the plant has put a lot of effort into reinforcing your cell walls, you’re probably not gonna turn into a comparably flexible leaf cell. other than that, sure, they have undifferentiated stem cells in all their growing tips just to lay things down and set everything straight when it first grows, but nothing is really set in stone and many kinds of tissues can just……turn into other types of tissues if they want to.
this means that plants do not care. if they hit the ground and can put down roots, it is completely within their power to start generating root cells, converting over former photosynthetic cells and generating new ones, etc. so, if you’re a sufficiently large broken off piece of plant, as long as you can stay free of infection or complete damage from the elements literally nothing is stopping you from just growing roots and turning into another plant. you’ll have the same DNA as the plant you came from, sure, but who cares? plant life is anarchy. this is why we can graft the branch/root system of one tree onto an entirely different tree and have the tree just accept it. this is also how cuttings work.Â
it’s kind of cool, how incredibly, radically different we are from plants in stuff like this. the plant body is just so flexible in terms of where it can go and what it can do. the animal body is a super powerful machine in it’s own right, but the animal body also relies on being very consolidated, and bodily flexibility like that of a plant would be impossible to maintain on a ton of different levels (i mean, just look what happens when our cells mutate and begin to break the established rules of our body; they develop into cancer). meanwhile if a part of a plant dies, it doesn’t mean the entire organism dies, and that’s partially due to their manipulation of basic underlying stuff like this. i did not mean to fall asleep on a desk in the library for half an hour and then wake up feeling all deep and shit about The Lads but yeah thats why leaf make another plant
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