The chemist across the hall was eating sweet corn with his family last night when he saw that one cob had a tiny little 2-inch ear growing out of one of the spots where a kernel should have been!Our resident maize geneticist had seen this before. Apparently, part of the molecular blueprint that a corn plant uses when making ears is to continuously suppress the ear tissue from producing branches. Most of us have 10 fingers and 10 toes, but as robust as the molecular blueprint is, sometimes it goofs up. In this case, the ear messed up and allowed a second little ear to start growing out of the middle of it!
Oooh. If I were into breeding corn, that's something I would want to play with!
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