Alan Meyer wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

...
Well I want the thermodynamics or energy relationships of the smallest
size possible plant seed. Can you have a plant grow from pure DNA, or
does it need a minimum stored energy to get it to the point where the
Sunlight takes over the job.
...


I'm not an expert on this but allow me to offer a speculative answer
to your question.

First, for simplicity, let's leave asided the orchid or any other
plant that gets part of its nutrients from a symbiotic relationship
with some other organism, and only consider seeds that can
grow on their own without help.

If we measure the weight of the seedling at its largest size
before photosynthesis begins, we should be measuring the
amount of material that was already in the seed, plus any water
or minerals absorbed from the ground.

I presume that there is not an exact cutoff point where growth
is fed by photosynthesis rather than stored energy. No doubt
there is a period of overlap. So we can't get an exact point
for this, but we can get an approximate, average point.

I also presume that the amount of water absorbed varies from
plant to plant, with some plants coming from seeds that are
relatively wet inside and others being quite dry and absorbing
most of their water from the environment.

But setting these complications aside, my speculation would
be that we come up with a figure that is many orders of
magnitude greater than the size of a bacterium, and in fact,
several orders of magnitude greater than the typical size of a
eucaryotic cell.

Alan



Yes I this is a good starting point to measure the weight of the seed
before we start and to weigh the seedling before photosynthesis begins.

I wonder if any experimenter has performed that task already.

I am especially interested in this topic for the Fusion Barrier
Principle where 2/3 breakeven is the upper limit. So I wonder if this
2/3 number appears in the Energy equation of a seed.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies