Like I said Tim, the power of DNA detection all comes from the work that was done before. Without that work, you're just giving me a piece of alien skin. What I said is within the realm of what we can achieve. That is all I will say about this topic. It is probably boring and pedantic to the rest of the group. On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 11:15 PM, Tim Harvey <zigur@hotmail.com> wrote: > > You'd better let Kew know. Their sequencing labs are unable to identify > unknowns at the generic level - and that was a lab specialising in a > particular family! > > T > > > > > Yep. Based on current technology (and all the resources at my disposal), > I > > can tell you how many individual plants there are, how many populations, > > how many genera, families, order...etc. I can even tell if a plant is a > > hybrid, what diseases it has, what and how many taxa of microbes live on > or > > within it, what beneficial fungi it is associated with. I can tell you > what > > it's chromosome counts are, how many functional genes it has, how the > > chromosomes rearranged themselves over time, how the genes rearranged > > themselves over time. Then I can infer each plant's evolutionary path and > > make an educated guess as to how old the species is and more and more. > And > > all of this is only possible because of the many years of work botanists, > > ecologists, microbiologists, and evolutionary biologists have spent > > gathering knowledge. We compare what we know today to what was known > > yesterday. > > > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ >