Anne S. Moffat, in a paper in Science "Engineering plants to cope with metals" (Ref. 41) says: "Many plants cope with

Question

metals by binding them in complexes with a class of peptides called phytochelatins and sequestering the complexes inside their cells. Now three groups have isolated genes for the enzymes, called phytochelatin synthases, that make the metal-binding peptides when the cell is exposed to toxic metals. ... After searching genome databases, they also found counterparts of the plant genes in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans." What are the implications of finding the same genes to inactivate metals in both plants and animals?

Answer 1

There may be plants (and animals) that concentrate certain minerals present in the
environment. This has implications for the costs of remediation; they are much lower when
phytoremediation is possible. See the answer to question 25 below also.
Some living things apparently can adjust under evolutionary pressure to metabolize toxic
materials. This appears to be an example of evolution in action, supporting the "theory of
evolution" sometimes impugned by ignorant people.
You should note to your students that the "theory of evolution" is as well supported by
science as the "theory of gravity." Both stand in the same relationship to observation. Both
have been tested multiple times. The major difference is that the "Newtoniuan theory of
gravity" has been shown to be a special case in a limited domain of a more general theory
of relativity by Einstein in 1915 . In biology, there has as yet been no such superseding
theory discovered.