<i>Utricularia gibba</i> (IMAGE)

University at Buffalo

<i>Utricularia gibba</i>

Caption

A scanning electron micrograph shows the bladder of Utricularia gibba, the humped bladderwort plant (color added). The plant is a voracious carnivore, with its tiny, 1-millimeter-long bladders leveraging vacuum pressure to suck in tiny prey at great speed. New research shows that the U. gibba genome contains almost no noncoding DNA, demonstrating that vast quantities of this so-called "junk DNA" may not be necessary for complex life.

Credit

Enrique Ibarra-Laclette, Claudia Anah&#237; P&#233;rez-Torres and Paulina Lozano-Sotomayor

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