[jas3]

Not if it is germinating...and you are comparing the acorn to a blastosphere, so your acorn must be germinating.

Prior to an acorn putting out a single shoot, it undergoes multiple cell divisions, much like a blastosphere. But it is still just a lonely acorn. Even if we define the cracking of the acorn husk as the earliest point at which an acorn becomes a "tree"(which is too early in my opinion), the acorn has undergone far more cell divisions that the THREE cell divisions that were the subject of the article that began this thread. And I would argue that for an acorn to transform into a tree it needs a to have a single proto-root and a single stem eminating from the acorn. One might equate that to a several week old fetus.

jas3

[syriacus]

Prior to an acorn putting out a single shoot, it undergoes multiple cell divisions, much like a blastosphere. But it is still just a lonely acorn. Even if we define the cracking of the acorn husk as the earliest point at which an acorn becomes a "tree"(which is too early in my opinion), the acorn has undergone far more cell divisions that the THREE cell divisions that were the subject of the article that began this thread. And I would argue that for an acorn to transform into a tree it needs a to have a single proto-root and a single stem eminating from the acorn. One might equate that to a several week old fetus.

Maybe botany doesn't provide good comparisons to human blastospheres.

Human embryos are so special that scientists are eager to experiment with as many of them as possible, and seem dissatisfied with animal models.

But, at the same time, human embryos are not special enough to deserve to live.

I'm glad I'm not that "special."