Ep 41 Ricin: A Bad Seed
This Podcast Will Kill You
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The Role of Ricin in Seed Predation
The biggest threats to seeds of this size come in the form of vertebrates. So evolution has imbued these seeds with ricin to counteract any potential threat other than an ant, taking seeds away. A mature plant would produce 50 to 100 seeds and a human would be dead within a few hours of eating 10 of those. But ricin isn't alone in producing these proteins at all. In fact, this is nearly identical to the toxin produced by the aforementioned Abron, abra's precatorias, which is in the legume family.
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