Scientists at UC Riverside in California have discovered the genetic trigger for the Great Potato Famine in phytophthora, a genus of molds that infest potatoes, soybeans, tomatoes and avocados. It was known that phytopthora caused the potato rot but not how it took hold.
According to U-T San Diego, microbes in phytopthora shut down the defense system these plants use to repel infections, a process called RNA silencing, which uses fragments of RNA called "small RNAs" to suppress the activity of certain genes. Without RNA silencing the potato is open to attack.
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According to a new study, proteins made by Phytophthora called "effectors" block RNA silencing in these plants, reducing their immunity to infection and making them vulnerable,.
During the Great Potato Famine in the mid-19th century, Phytophthora infestans destroyed the potato leaves and tubers in Ireland. One million Irish died of starvation during the famine and many of the survivors emigrated to the U.S.
The molds still threaten agriculture crops, with billions of dollars lost worldwide.
RNA silencing is also found in humans and mammals and similar effectors are made by the Plasmodium genus of malarial parasites.
The study, which was published by Nature Genetics, was led by Wenbo Ma, a UCR associate professor of plant pathology and microbiology. In the study, researchers alluded to the larger implication of their research.
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"Our discovery warrants further efforts to identify and characterize RNA silencing suppressors produced by eukaryotic pathogens that infect mammals."
The researchers are already studying how to thwart the effectors, which could lead to the development of Phytopthera-resistant crops.
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"We are in the process of testing some plants to manipulate the RNA silencing pathway, and then infect them with Phytopthera pathogens to see whether there's enhanced resistance or enhanced susceptability," Ma said.
If their work is successful, the technology can be used to produce crop plants resistant to the various species of Phytopthora.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.Freeman | Feb 20, 2013, 10:35 AM EST
It was the British that caused the famine in Ireland,silly.You do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.
porkheaven | Feb 19, 2013, 09:16 PM EST
Look I agree with all you have said but some good may come from this something that may help to prevent from happening again. Ind 68 michagan st 67
handsome68 | Feb 19, 2013, 06:37 PM EST
This dead horse is now practically fine dust from your beating it over and over. Life is not fair, you know, and it wasn't fair back then. Young Queen Victoria was kept from knowing the very real situation of the Irish at the time. It is a pity that Mr. Dickens didn't write one of his books, but he had his own upwardly-mobile agenda at the time, and "A Christmas Carol" sounded a whole lot better than "An Expose of British Neglect of Ireland".
seanomelb | Feb 19, 2013, 05:35 PM EST
Dopey Wee Willy fails to acknowledge that non catholics also died during the famine and their ministers lived off the fat of the land denied to the poor. Wee Willy should understand that some Protestant landlords helped feed the dispossessed. Wee Willy is an orange bigot and deserves to be ignored on this site.
bunkerhill | Feb 19, 2013, 03:50 PM EST
It was no potato famine, it was genocide. However the meglomaniacs who have destroyed this planet from the dawn of time while living in palaces with slaves waiting on them hand and foot are the true monsters. Inbred, possessed with insatiable greed, they destroyed the lives of the decent people and yet they are glorified in every history book and most recently by Hollywood. The Irish in Ireland were the first people on earth to declare that "All men are created equal" the foundation of the USA.
JimmyJK | Feb 19, 2013, 03:10 PM EST
Uhhhh.... It was the english rulers lack of compassion for a beaten down and oppressed people.....
IrelandNorth | Feb 19, 2013, 02:06 PM EST
So does this get the English off the hook, then? Bureaucraphobia Trevalyanensis is superceded by phytophtora infestans? Or is it just that the latter was aggravated by the former. More important still, has an antidote yet been found in the beakers of any laboratory for the genus 'imperialismus angleterres'.
phinsman | Feb 19, 2013, 12:06 PM EST
The largest percentage of my European heritage comes from Ireland (40%) and all of my Irish ancestors emigrated to the US in the mid 1800s. I am guessing it was because of the potato famine. I am so relieved that they were able to survive.
Portia_O'Neill | Feb 19, 2013, 10:49 AM EST
Enda Delaney writes, “Anti-Catholicism was a central component of British national identity in the middle of the nineteenth century, ranging from street-level, ‘no popery’ agitation, which reached its peak in the early 1850s, to long-held suspicions about the aspirations of Rome in influencing British affairs."
Will Hamilton | Feb 19, 2013, 09:31 AM EST
How many Roman Catholic priests, bishops and upper management died of starvation during the famine? None! It's like the time "bishop" Eamon Casey made an appeal on TV for the people in Ethiopia where he had just been helping (token grandstanding) the starving. There was silence in the pub until someone pointed out that for a man who had just come back from a famine he was "as fat as a little pig".
GraydonWilson | Feb 19, 2013, 09:29 AM EST
Nonsense. The mold only caused the potatoes to rot. It was England that caused — and perpetuated — the famine. It was England that created a population that was at near-starvation and vulnerable. It was England that removed an average of seven shiploads of food from Ireland every day during the famine. It was England that brought in Indian maize that was too hard to eat, that had to be ground twice and then decided to stop altogether. It was England that enforced the landlords' evictions.
Portia_O'Neill | Feb 18, 2013, 09:44 PM EST
We now know that of 8 million people during the 1840s one-third of the population was at the precipice of starvation at any point in time. While oatmeal, milk, and fish featured into reports of contemporaries as eaten by poor people, there is no doubting the pre-eminence of the potato. The Irish poor ate 10 to 12 pounds of potatoes a day.
curtisjohnson | Feb 18, 2013, 08:18 PM EST
“Where was the Vatican during this blight?” The Vatican has been consistently hostile to the interest of Irish nationalism and the indigenous population from at least the time of bill the orange.
Joe Kelsall | Feb 18, 2013, 06:41 PM EST
Portia_O'Neill: Poor people supplemented their diet with buttermilk and oatmeal; A perfectly balanced diet. They only made butter for salle but used the valuable buttermilk for their family.
warrenpoint00 | Feb 18, 2013, 06:24 PM EST
Some people really do believe that one million people starved to death because of a potato crop failure, just one failed vegetable.These are the same people that believe that there was no Jewish holocaust either.Sad ill informed creatures.
Portia_O'Neill | Feb 18, 2013, 05:53 PM EST
Enda Delaney in his book “The Curse of Reason” lists the potato famine failures occurring In 1765, 1770, 1795, 1800, 01, 1816-19, 1822, 1830-31 caused by bad weather, blights in Europe, and unique local events in western Ireland. In 1851 William Wilde wrote three hundred pages on famines in Ireland going back to pre-Christian eras. A poor family with four children would eat 40 pounds of potatoes a day! It was so nutritious it is thought to have fueled the population explosion of the early 19th century when Ireland’s population reached 8 million. Teen marriages contributed to the explosive growth in population.
seanomelb | Feb 18, 2013, 05:50 PM EST
Phytophtoro caused the potato to die ,British policy caused the people to die.
Bocktherobber | Feb 18, 2013, 03:20 PM EST
Well done yet again, Irish Central. Potato Famine, you say?
anglo-norman | Feb 18, 2013, 02:41 PM EST
Where was the Vatican during this blight?
FallsRNat | Feb 18, 2013, 02:30 PM EST
more historical inaccuracy
handsome68 | Feb 18, 2013, 12:43 PM EST
It figures. A lot of bad stuff starts out in California.
Searlit | Feb 18, 2013, 12:13 PM EST
Maybe the scientists don't know any better than to call it a potato famine, although IC should. I protest, as a descendant of Irish people who survived the genocide of the 1840's, in Ireland!
jmchrystal | Feb 18, 2013, 11:44 AM EST
The comments below pretty well sum up my views. Science is good stuff, but the human element needs to be accounted for, English greed caused the conditions that allowed the mold to do it's worse. Therefore, it's English greed that caused the Irish famine and the death of millions of Irish.
omaolchonaire | Feb 18, 2013, 11:12 AM EST
What a load of crap. This problem was not exclusive to Ireland. The English stealing all the land of the Irish and forcing them to exist as squatters in indentured labour in their own land is what caused them to be forced to subside on potatoes. There was more than twice food necessary to feed the population of Ireland during the famine. The fault is one hundred percent in the hands of the greedy English and the treacherous Irish-born barons who sold out their kin for a slice of the vile English pie. Spreading this kind of disinformation is tantamount to denying the Jewish holocaust. There is absolutely no difference. The British treatment of the Irish was worse than the German treatment of Jews and others, because it lasted for hundreds of years. Of course, anybody who makes similar statements about the Nazis is quite deservedly strung up by the cajones. Why do we let racism against Irish continue? Why do we get blamed for the fact everything from our culture to language to legal system was stolen from us? The reason Irish were eating potatoes is because they didn't have any land, because it was confiscated by the British under the Penal Laws. By the end of the 19th century the Irish language had nearly been eliminated. The famine was merely the bullet the English chose, because it was not only the cheapest, but for them profitable. Not to mention, continuing to cart of the Ireland's bounty as her sons and daughters starved protected their population from the potato blight, when they were just as dependent on the potato but due to overpopulation rather than robbery.
slainte9 | Feb 18, 2013, 10:35 AM EST
The mold cause some potatoes to rot. The British let the people starve.
Joe Kelsall | Feb 18, 2013, 10:25 AM EST
We know what caused it: we also know who exacerbated the Holocaust. An Economist of Spanish Jewish origin : Nassau Senior, who is quoted as saying " The Winter will only kill 1,000,000 and that will not be enough". The British even refused to send unserviceable army uniforms to Ireland so that the people could not use them for warmth. It WAS a holocaust with genocidal intent.
kinvara7 | Feb 18, 2013, 09:54 AM EST
Discovering the cause of a crop failure is not the same thing as discovering the 'cause' of a 'famine'. The country at that time was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was one of the wealthiest countries in the world at that time, yet British Government spending on famine relief in Ireland amounted to £8.3 million, less than half of one per cent of the gross national product of the United Kingdom for a single year. So unless the scientists at UC Riverside can explain that, I suggest that IC change the headline.
Mortimer74 | Feb 18, 2013, 09:52 AM EST
"Scientists discover what caused Ireland's Great Potato Famine" A large country to the east called England.
antoman | Feb 18, 2013, 09:17 AM EST
It is well known here in Cork by families who survived the plot, and dastardly attack, that the blight was initiated by the English to slay as many Irish as possible. The spores were carried here from America and deliberately released at locations throughout Ireland by a cabal of Englishmen. It is not yet known if they were acting for the Monarchy or done so under their own initiative. Of course using bacterial warfare is very ancient. From hurling dead bodies over besieged city walls to cause disease, to dropping them down wells to poison the water. Certainly the English Monarchy had a hand in the genocide that followed. They held the whip hand over us Irish and done little or nothing to prevent millions from dying. Whereas in Scotland very few died from hunger caused by the blight as the landlords there saw to it the populace were fed. Apparently one of the dastardly Englishmen who spread the blight causing spores in Ireland holidayed in Scotland afterwards and via his clothing and boots. Inadvertently caused the potato blight there. Very shameful. Better to have democracy and a country of your own than be under the whip hand of the English. That's for certain.