Slashdot Mirror
Banana to be Sequenced
GodsMadClown writes "New Scientist
reports
that a global consortium plans to sequence the genetic code of a wild banana from east Asia. Because bananas are triploidal instead of diploidal, they are only able to reproduce asexually, which means that it adapts slower than organisms reproducing sexually. 'One rule of joining the consortium is that any invention developed through the project and protected [by patent] will be made available to smallholders through a royalty-free license,' says Emile Frison, director of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain."
And I thought that bioscientist were keen on experimenting with banana flies, not bananas per se. What does it sound like: "Scientist gone bananas?"
D'oh!
New McDonalds Banana(tm) made from real(tm) Bananas! Hits our stores?
The original story description was entirely non-coherent. So for anyone who actually cares, according to the article, bananas are being sequenced because the varieties favored by Western civilization are a nautral hybrid, and also happen to be sterile. This makes it impossible to crossbreed with Asian varieties that are more resistant to pests and diseases, hence, gene sequencing... all so that CostaRicans can use less pesticides, make more money from all of us banana loving Westerners.
"...for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain?!"
And here I was worrying that the world was in trouble. Now I can sleep at night.
I'm sure when his parents see long time friends they proudly announce that their wonderful son/daughter is director of the International Network for the Improvement of the Banana and Plantain...
I wonder how I can get on the board of directors...
sig.
Of course they reproduce asexually, who has ever seen two bananas humping eachother?
Hate me!
Thought it had something to do with a song or band called Banana being sequenced (i.e. recreated in MIDI) haha
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. it's the only thing that ever has.
'One rule of joining the consortium is that any invention developed through the project and protected [by patent] will be made available to smallholders through a royalty-free license,' says Emile Frison, director of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain"
Is that GPL or BSD ?
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
When my alarm clock went off this morning, BBC Radio 1 news was in full soothsayer mode, foretelling how bananas will be wiped out by disease in ten years if nothing is done. Horrified, I hit snooze.
According to a trivia game I was playing the other day, the banana is a herb, not fruit. Go figure.
The kind of bananas the we buy in our stores are triploid hybrids. This means that they are sterile and produce no seeds. They are reproduced from cuttings of the creeping underground stem, the 'banana trees' are actually upshoot from this.
They downside is that all cuttings are genetically identical, so if a new disease or pest comes along, ALL commercial bananas are threatened. With other crops, crossbreeding with other strains can improve the resistance to the pests.
Introducing resistance genes in commercial bananas can only be done by genetic engineering. Remember that there are still wild sexually reproducing bananas out there, so maybe we will be eating hybrids of other species in the future.
Royalty-free, sure. But what about the up-front fee? Oh, prohibitive? Thank you.
Is there any other plant in the world that reproduces sexually?
They say they will sequence wild bananas first (rather than the kind we eat) so that the relevant choromosomes/genes/whatever else can be put in the edible varieties to make them resistant to disease etc. ....
Now to put them in the edible varieties , shouldnt they also be sequenced?
Also can't they put in the genes which make the Western bananas taste good into the wild ones? The fact that they grow in the wild should make it easier to grow, right?
Is suppose the banana scientists have thought of all that
Well,atleast the genes being open to all redefines the term banana re-public.....
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
"the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain.".
;-)
Observe the birth of a new acronym!
The Banana is a strange thing cos its both, a banana (the yellow thing you peel and eat) is undoubtedly a fruit (containing the seeds of the plant), though since commercially grown banana plants are sterile, the seeds are reduced to little specks.
However, the banana plant, though it is called a 'banana-tree' in popular usage, is technically regarded as a herbaceous plant (or `herb'), not a tree, because the stem does not contain true woody tissue.
"They downside is that all cuttings are genetically identical, so if a new disease or pest comes along, ALL commercial bananas are threatened."
wasn't there a potato famine in Ireland once?
the great battles of earth are coming. Will we continue to totally manufacture our entire existence, or will nature backlash through humanity and cause the great primitivist revolt?
Protesters were killed by the state in Boliva today. They are struggling against Neoliberalism (extreme capitalism).
the war is spreading everywhere. are you ready?
Hey Emile Frison, is that a banana in your pocket or are you just the director of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain?
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
on the other hand - I have to wonder, while interesting how does this article fit in slashdot?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Once they find and patent the banana's "funny" gene, slapstick comedy movie production prices will go through the roof...
There's evidently an australian children's show called "Bananas in Pajamas," which has some rather nightmarish homoerotic(?) overtones.
I'm rather relieved that my Google search for "bananas pajamas porn" returned no results.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
"Banana To Get Sentenced" I read..
Be it wrong as it may, but somehow it felt right.
... bananas.. sexually...
I think I have a picture of that somewhere.
Scorchio's not kidding; I heard it on the radio too.
According to The Sun, BANANAS could vanish from supermarkets because a vicious disease is wiping them out.
The fungus, Sigatoka, is devastating plants in Africa.
And experts say it threatens to spread to all edible varieties of the fruit, killing them within ten years.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
'One rule of joining the consortium is that any invention developed through the project and protected [by patent] will be made available to smallholders through a royalty-free license,'
Do they know to beware clever ideas put forward by the biochemists from the Rambus contingent?
So they think they own the genome for a particular banana.
Now we can finally update that tired knock-knock joke:
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
You are Terry Pratchett and I claim my five pounds!
1: You do not talk about consortium.
Since this is the funny thread. My SOT (Slightly off topic) comment will be banana related... I sing this all the time at karaoke. Imagine that. It will in the very least put a smile on your face.
There's a fruit store on our street
It's run by a Greek.
And he keeps good things to eat
But you should hear him speak!
When you ask him anything, he never answers "no".
He just "yes"es you to death,
And as he takes your dough, he tells you...
"Yes! We have no bananas
We have no bananas today!!
We have string beans and onions, cabBAges and scallions
And all kinds of fruit and say
We have an old fashioned toMAHto
A Long Island poTAHto, but
Yes! We have no bananas
We have no bananas today!"
Business got so good for him that he wrote home today,
"Send me Pete and Nick and Jim; I need help right away."
When he got them in the store, there was fun, you bet.
Someone asked for "sparrow grass"
and then the whole quartet
All answered:
"Yes, we have no bananas
We have-a no bananas today.
Just try those coconuts
Those wall-nuts and doughnuts
There ain't many nuts like they.
We'll sell you two kinds of red herring,
Dark brown, and ball-bearing.
But yes, we have no bananas
We have no bananas today."
Not to be confused with:
- National Association for the Advancement of Oranges
- Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Kumquats
- Foundation for a Better Blueberry
- Organization of Anthropomorphic
Carrots
and the little known:Bush should have died, not Reagan -- Morrissey
Morrissey rides a cockhorse -- The Warlock Pinchers
Seems like anyone looking to draw attention to their organism of choice simply announces a new genome project. You'd think they'd wait to see how useful the human sequence is first- after all, many millions more dollars are being spent researching and analyzing that, and it's still taking a while for people to produce anything useful from it. It's a valuable reference, but I doubt banana research is as intensive and sophisticated as research in human genetics. (Just a hunch.)
In other news, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws announced plans to sequence the Cannabis sativa genome. A group spokesman said, "We're hoping this project will lead to. . . um. . . shit, I think I ate my notes."
Bananas:
1. Clone
2. Insert DNA
3. ???
4. Profit!
Seriously, most strawberries are quadriploidal (4N), by design. They are larger this way, what about research in this direction? I'd be much angrier if there were no strawberries!
What crazy westerner decided that everyone prefers the typical banana? I happily munched wild bananas while trekking in Northern Thailand and goddam they're like a different fruit. Unimaginably sweet, fragrant...amazing - like nectar. Not the bland lumps sold in UK supermarkets. They are small (offending western male self-perception) and probably don't travel well so thank-you evil corporations for 'deciding' that we prefer this genetically weak alternative so they can make a buck. I hope they DO die out and we 'stuck' with REAL bananas. Zu.
Oh, it's not that kind of sequencing? Sorry, my bad.
You fall down just looking at it.
Dish > Banana > Ice cream > Chocolate syrup > Whipped cream > Sprinkles > Cherries > Spoon
mmmmm...
You mean United Fruit doesn't control everything? We invaded the Dominican Republic and Nigaragua for nothing?
Whose banana are they sequencing?
-Esme
It is not simply true that triploidal plants and animals have to replicate asexual. Cultivated bananas indeed do have 3 chromosomes of each of the 11 different chromosomes available. During meiosis, when two possible parent plants are creating gametes (think of sperm and eggs) by splitting cells with 3 chromosomes of each type into cells with either 1 or 2 of the 3 chromomes.
In the next step, such gametes need to be fertilized, i.e., 2 cells, just like a sperm cell and egg cell, need to be fertilized and merged together. If this results in a cell with 3 chromosomes of each chromosome type, a new banana child can grow from this. But since gametes contain 1 or 2 of each type of chromosome, and they have 11 such types, there is only a 1/2^11 change that this sexual reproduction is succesful.
Note that this only applies to the cultivated banana, as we know it from the super market. And you've probably never eaten a banana with pits in it. Bananas with pits exist, but there's only one in about 2048. These bananas can be used to create new banana trees, and they're different from their not-succesful bananas in that they are a lot smaller, and not edible, if compared to common cultivated bananas.
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
You mention bananas and all the 'intersting' people come out.
This space for rent, inquire within.
What about the insidious banana problem?
I think I'd go mad.
Bananas even.
Summation 2
..when I read "asexually" I was reminded of an old school chum's brother who used to torture my favorite science teacher in highschool.
It usually went something like:
teacher: "Who can tell me what organisms reproduce asexually?"
Kyle: "Uhm, your wife?"
Other such interactions usually went like:
Kyle: "So, Mr. Cronshy. How's your wife and my kids?"
Kyle even managed to lock him and a female teacher in a closet during class once.
Needless to say, Kyle was kicked out of that class.
Like I said, OT but funny (to me at least) and I've got karma points to burn, so..
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Scientists tried before to sequence banana, but they didn't know when to stop.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
'triploidal bananas' would make an excellent name for a rock band.
Triploid hybrids(3n)? how about using colchicine-treated(tm) protocorm to produced 6n or 12n plants from the 3n?
e s/ fruit_breed.html
http://www.tropical-seeds.com/tech_forum/pubs_r
So, it is highly likely that the sterility may be caused by other genetic problems as well(like mixing two so genetically-distant bananas species together) rather than polypoidism itself.
In his book, The Botany of Desire , Michael Pollan devotes a chapter to the apple and discusses at some length a similar problem. Apple trees are grown from cuttings from older trees already known to produce tasty apples. (The seeds in any given apple are all completely genetically different from the apple they came from and will not produce a tree of similarly-tasty fruit.)
Almost all the apple varieties we consume here in the States (Delicious, Gala, Fuji, and several other I can't remember) can trace their genes back to one tree from the 1800s. Whole industries are based upon this rather homogenous crop, and disease could be devasting. The current answer is heavy spraying of pesticides. Diversification of profitable appple varieties would be better though.
Some of the pages from this apple chapter can be read online at Amazon (but not the most interesting ones, of course).
I can't imagine a world without bananas.
According to the definition I was taught at culinary school, an "herb" is anything that comes from the leaf of a plant. Parsley, basil, arugula, cilantro, spinach and rosemary all qualify as herbs - bananas definitely do not.
This will help developing nations farm healthier food while stop them from using the U.S.'s banned pesticides. Plus, GMO foods suck. If we can't even handle the y2k switch, what the hell are we doing hacking the universes most dense code? I don't trust Genetic Engineers to safely mess with anything; let's get operating systems and apps working right first.
"But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo..." - William Gibson I'm a signature virus. Please c
This is OT but I had to say. The following is a conversation I had with a cow-orker while showing him this article.
Me: "Hey, look they are going to sequence the DNA of a Banana."
Him: "Bananas have DNA?"
Pardon me while I cleanse the gene pool (no pun intended).
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
That's nuts.
Are monkeys (as natural babana consumers) being sequenced too?
If so, how does this affect Ximian?
more info at this site
heh heh
Travis
There is no news on Radio 1 - it's all breathlessly delivered headlines. If they spend to long (more than half a minute) reading these headlines , a voice screams "the music mo-foo-koo put da music onnnnn!"
everyone not in the "global consortium" has to pay royalties if the want to use genetic information from the banana.
And when that rouge banna asextually spawns roots in my back yard, do I require a license for the genetic patents?
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
We won't have any bananas in 10 years!
'Scientists warn today that the world's favourite fruit could be extinct within 10 years because it is unable to fight off a rampaging plague of pests and disease'
Defenceless banana will be extinct in 10 years
If bananas don't reproduce sexually, then why do they produce fruit?
FRA: STFU GTFO
Go Banana!
Man, for a second there I read "Banana to be Sentenced", and wondered what exactly it did to be featured on /.
Quoth the zombie, braaaaaaaains
I didn't realize that bananas were so heavily dosed with poisons.
I don't think I want to eat them any more. They can't be healthy for me.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
My girlfriend was once a director of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain....Damn was I ever envious of bannanas back then
This is the first step to Wonkavision!
1. Banana plants are propagated from shoots taken from another banana plant.
2. Bananas are by far the most heavily sprayed crop in the world.
3. "Wild banana" would probably make a great name for a band.
Sometimes, a banana is just a banana.
(Yes the original version of the comment referred to cigars. so?)
Banana sequencing.
And no mention of Harry Belafonte.
Shame that.
Solid work by the Slashdot Editors, as always. ;-)
...since most of them don't have a chance of reproducing sexually either.
In SOVIET RUSSIA, banana sequences YOU!
...the banana sequences you! Sorry, just had to try it on.
I thought the headline had something to do with Banana Chan, but I am the only person who would think that.
Surely anyone here over the age of thirty-five remembers the theme song:
One banana, two banana, three banana, four
Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more
Over hill and highway the banana buggies go
Comin' to bring you the Banana Split show
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Do you see many american chestnuts tree on the east cost today?
Just consider, chestnut trees were considered junk wood - there are entire barns made of chestnut. I have a desk made by an apprentice that I believe is chestnut. The wood matches the chestnut in my sister's house.
Now consider bananas, if a decease like blight hit them, we probably would not be able to buy banana in the store.
I hope someone as at least keeping a watchful eye on peanut populations. It would sure suck to save bananas from extinction, but still wind up unable to make PB&B sandwiches.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
After hearing a bit more on this topic (sorry, my doctor told me not to each a lot of bananas), aplogies to any Scientists offended by my comments (No bananas were hurt in the process of writing my comment). Ok, you can study it so you can make something to kill off fungus, but what about those people who only eat organic food?.
LAST POST!@$#$!&
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with an Oops-Oops here and an Oops-Oops there
here an Oops, there an Oops, everywhere an Oops-Oops.
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