[Sca-cooks] Bannanas

[Jeff Heilveil]

Salut!
It's been a while, but I couldn't help jumping in on this one...

Plants have this neat habit where often when plants cross there will be a
problem (called non-disjunction) where the chromosomes do not separate.
therefore, instead of the offspring having two copies of each chromosome
they can have either 3 (2 from one parent and the normal 1 copy of each
from the other) or 4 copies of each chromosome [called triploid and
tetraploid respectively].  More often than not, triploid plants are
sterile, hence the lack of seeds in bannanas.  The one real problem with
this is that all of the bannanas that are currently used are cuttings of
essentially the same plant so a single plant disease could wipe them all
out.

Wow.  my Bio students would be so happy to hear of a practical application
for the information they heard in lecture this semester...

Cu drag,
Bogdan

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Ecotourism: Having people pay money to see exotic INSECTS in THEIR native
habitats

Ecoterrorism: Having PEOPLE pay money to _not_ see exotic insects in THEIR
native habitats
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Jeffrey Heilveil M.S.		      Ld. Bogdan de la Brasov, C.W.
Department of Entomology	A Bear's paw and base vert on field argent
University of Illinois
heilveil at uiuc.edu
home: (217) 355-5702
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