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In contrast, workers are wingless females with smaller body size and degenerated reproductive tracts, usually without a sperm storage organ.

"We found that hormone-treated worker ants developed many gyne-like physical characteristics, such as increased body length, three extra frontal eyes, wings and flight muscles, gyne-like brains; they even developed the gyne-specific sperm storage organ that workers of this species never have."

In its first year, the carrot develops a tasty orange root, but this is merely a storage organ for the following spring, when it shoots up and produces umbels of tiny white flowers, each destined to become a seed.

Martin adds that the AtMYB12 gene could also be engineered into other fruits, and potentially certain vegetables where the products could be accumulated in a storage organ such as a tuber.

“They were eating the tubers, that is, the underground storage organ,” said the senior author of the study, Karen Hardy, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.