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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.
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.
Any plants with flowers are examples of sexual reproduction in plants. The pollen of one flower being transferred to the stamen of another by insects is an example of sexual reproduction.
Genes are combined from two different sets to produce a single gene set and a new seed (now that's sexual).
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!
There's evidently an australian children's show called "Bananas in Pajamas," which has some rather nightmarish [angelfire.com] homoerotic(?) overtones.
You're not kidding; in fact the theme song goes "Bananas in pajamas are coming down the stairs."
Powerful fruit indeed.
There seems to be a bit of confusion caused by the terms diploid and triploid.
These terms refer to the number of sets of chromosomes each cell of an organism carries. Diploid is like us with 2 sets triploid is predictably 3 sets. Having 3 sets of chroromsomes is no problem untill you have to half the chrosomme number in making gametes (sperms, egg, pollen etc) A triploid organism can't make viable gametes, so is sterile.
Not all Bananas are triploid though, we reproduce triploid ones because not bothering with reproduction they are more vigorous in there growth and wont make seeds. Seedless watermelons are triploid and there are even (engineered) triploid carp, used to clear weed from lakes etc but denied the chance to reproduce and start a population
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!
-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