Does cancer affect plants?
 

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Does cancer affect plants?
 

Please be more specific. If you mean, can plants catch cancer from animals, the
answer is no. Plants do not catch animal diseases. As a matter of fact,
animals, including people, do not catch cancer from each other, unless it is
caused by a retrovirus, & even then, contagion is extremely rare.
If you mean, do plants get cancer, in general, there are no diseases I know of
in plants where cell division runs amok and spreads throughout the plant.
Occasionally, a plant will exhibit some excessive callous proliferation at the
site of a specific wound, but I never heard of it spreading to another part of
the plant. Sometimes plants get galls caused by a disease or insect, but it is
not really the same as cancer.
There is a condition in plants called fasciation, where the growing point
becomes a line, or monstrose growth, where the growing point becomes totally
confused. The resulting plant is a curiosity, but it is not a sickness & does
not affect the plant's health.
Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming
train."
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

Does cancer affect plants?
 

If you mean, do plants get cancer,

Yes. I meant to ask if plants can get cancer on their own. Just like
humans and animals. Virus infection? In theory, any cell [plant,
animal, fungi, algae etc.] constantly irritated by viral enzymes could
undergoes some mutation. Right?

BTW, I have notice some abnormally bright green spots in my tulip
petals. They are supposed to be yellow, not green. Could this be due
to viral infection of chloroplasts in cells of the "blood green"
region's of the tulip's petals?

Does cancer affect plants?
 

I meant to ask if plants can get cancer on their own. Just like humans and
animals. BRBR

Not that I know of. Plants do not respond to virus or other irritants the same
as animals.

I have notice some abnormally bright green spots in my tulip petals. They
are supposed to be yellow, not green.

I would have to see them to hazard a guess. it does not sound like a virus. In
tulips, a virus may cause streaks in the flowers, or no other symptom besides
general decline.
A virus infection in a plant is rarely localized that I know of. Sooner or
later it spreads to the entire plant.
Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming
train."
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

Does cancer affect plants?
 

In article ,
Radium wrote:
If you mean, do plants get cancer,

Yes. I meant to ask if plants can get cancer on their own. Just like
humans and animals. Virus infection? In theory, any cell [plant,
animal, fungi, algae etc.] constantly irritated by viral enzymes could
undergoes some mutation. Right?

Look up Agrobacterium tumifaciens (I probably spelled that wrong). It
causes plant tumors, and the tumor producing genes get incorporated into
the chromosomes of the host. There are a number of other organisms that
cause plants to produce "tumors", including some insects that induce galls.
Fungi and nematodes induce lumpos on roots in "root knot" disease, and
notrogen fixing bacteria induce similar root nodules. Often it's done
by secreting plant hormones.

It's hard to decide what a cancer would be like in a plant. Plants don't
have fixed forms like most animals do, and they normally have embryonic
cells all the time. They also lack a circulatory system that can transport
cells.

BTW, I have notice some abnormally bright green spots in my tulip
petals. They are supposed to be yellow, not green. Could this be due
to viral infection of chloroplasts in cells of the "blood green"
region's of the tulip's petals?

It could be. Or it could be from fungal or insect damage. The petals are
green to start with, and local damage might prevent a patch of tissue from
maturing properly. There's a group of tulip cultivars called viridifloras
that retain green color in parts of the petals as a genetic trait.

You sound like an observant person with an inquiring mind. There are all
kinds of interesting things to be observed with plants. Every year or
two I find an orange in the store with a somatic mutation that makes the
skin much thinner or thicker over a quarter section of the surface. I
once found an onion plant among the normal ones that had longitudinal
yellow stripes on the leaves. This was probably due to the kind of
viral infection you are thinking of (the yellow stripes, not the green
ones). I wanted to see if it might be genetic instead, but the plant
was quite weak and didn't survive to set seed.