Sport (botany)

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In botany, a sport or bud sport, traditionally called lusus,^[2] is a part of a plant that shows morphological differences from the rest of the plant. Sports may differ by foliage shape or color, flowers, fruit, or branch structure. The cause is generally thought to be chance genetic mutations^[3] in a single cell. Sports may also arise from stable changes in gene expression due to epigenetic modifications, including histone modification, DNA methylation, chromatin remodeling and RNA silencing.^[4] If the clonal descendants of a modified cell eventually form a meristem that gives rise to new plant parts, those may be of a new phenotype. Often only part of the meristem cells are affected, resulting in genetic chimerism in such sports.