Researchers from Skoltech, in collaboration with colleagues from the Saint Petersburg State Forest Technical University and the Institute of Forest of the Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, have discovered that the unique characteristics of the Karelian birch are due to a genetic mutation that has remained unexplained for the past 100 years.
The scientists also identified differences in the genomes of the Karelian birch and the common white-barked birch. This allowed them to identify the plant at early stages of development using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method.
The Karelian birch can only be identified by its external characteristics, which manifest themselves only 8 years after its “birth” and later.
Professor Elena Potokina from the Center for Agrotechnologies at Skoltech suggested in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper that it all comes down to a mutation in one gene, and scientists now know on which chromosome it is located. Due to this “defect” in this area, the normal formation of xylem—the plant’s main water-conducting tissue—is disrupted, resulting in the phenotype of the Karelian birch with its characteristic patterns.
The researchers sequenced the genome of Karelian birch samples, discovered mutations in them, and analyzed the population structure. It was found that the peculiarities of the Karelian birch are determined by changes in genes rather than by the influence of the environment, as previously assumed.