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."
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.
Of course they reproduce asexually, who has ever seen two bananas humping eachother?
Hate me!
'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.
Is there any other plant in the world that reproduces sexually?
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.
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!
'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?
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!
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.
You fall down just looking at it.
Dish > Banana > Ice cream > Chocolate syrup > Whipped cream > Sprinkles > Cherries > Spoon
mmmmm...
-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
I think I'd go mad.
Bananas even.
Summation 2
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.