Dr Michelle Dickinson: nanotechnologist on the new research revealing how roses got their thorns

According to Greek mythology, red roses first appeared when Aphrodite pricked her foot on a thorn, spilling blood on a white rose. Since then, roses’ thorns have captured the imaginations of countless poets and filled the outdoor spaces of keen gardeners. For those of us who love the thought of roses, but don’t like the prickles – new research published in the journal Science has found the gene that can stop them from forming! Prickles are designed as effective deterrents to herbivores, helping to keep them protected from being eaten. However, they make the cultivation of agricultural plants difficult. While roses are beautiful, especially in a vase – their thorns are less desirable. One common solution is to use a knife to cut off the individual thorns, however this is not only a lengthy and sometimes painful process but can also wound the plant. To try and find the origin of the prickle, scientists started with eggplants (which also have prickles) and found a gene family called LONELY GUY or LOG for short. When they created LOG mutations, they were able to eliminate the prickles in eggplants, and wondered if this gene was responsible for prickles in other plants? They scoured the world for plants that did and didn’t have prickles to compare them both and used genome editing to try and remove the prickles from plants as broad as the native Australian berry tree known as desert raisins - to the more well known roses. The team managed to find LOG-related prickle genes in 20 species of plant, which not only could help to engineer thornless varieties but also provides huge insights into understanding millions of years of evolution amongst plants. Interestingly, rose thorns are not actually thorns. 'Thorn' is used to describe a plant with branches modified for physical defence. Because the pointy projections of a rose bush are modified epidermal cells (similar to skin cells in humans), roses do not have thorns, they have prickles.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.