By Daniel Chamovitz Last month, a group of scientists from
around the world announced that they had successfully determined
the DNA sequence of the tomato genome. One of the most
surprising results of this work was that the lowly tomato, like
rice and the common Arabidopsis before it, has more genes than
we do – about 25% more. How could this seemingly passive plant
that we know and love, that key ingredient in ketchup and in our
summer salads, be genetically more complex than we are? This
question has several answers, but I want to focus on one aspect
of a tomato’s life, and indeed the lives of all plants that we
don’t often consider: how plants deal with rootedness and
adversity, and how this could influence their genetic
complexity. Rootedness is arguably the major constraint on plant
evolution, and its implications are that plants can’t escape
adversity. Think about how we deal with adversity. We often
solve problems by moving, either by running away from a
dangerous situation, or by migrating to a better