The Mystery of the Missing Mutations in Plant DNA: Evidence of Recent Bottlenecks in Nightshades

Potatoes and tomatoes should look wildly different in their DNA barcodes — yet they don’t. Across the matK gene, potatoes differ from each other by 20–60 mutations, tomatoes by 10–30, and even between the two species only ~100. When measured against real mutation rates, this points not to deep evolutionary splits but to surprisingly recent bottlenecks — just thousands of years ago.

This research challenges long timelines, showing that plant genetic diversity is modest, measurable, and consistent with rapid accumulation since a global reset. Nightshades (and animals too) may be telling the same story: life’s DNA history is far shorter — and far more recent — than we’ve been taught.

By Matt Nailor | Truth in Research (2025)