Attack on the Clones

April 1, 2009 - 11:40 PM

Please note that the title of this blog, and the blog itself, was inspired by my new roommate, Sam Wotipka, a sophomore majoring in biology who also went to Central Catholic high school while I was there. Interestingly enough, he found an apartment on Craigslist to move into, and it happened to be mine. After about a half-hour of schmoozing, he and I discovered that we had spent two years of high school wandering the halls together.

Anyway, the reason that this blog is entitled "Attack on the Clones" is because Sam did a research project on the United States' most commonly consumed banana species. Apparently, according to Sam, the everyday household banana, known as the Cavendish, is a species that is cloned for mass production, distribution, and consumption.

This species of banana, a replacement for a better banana that was once widely consumed, is rather new in the US because the former cloned bananas were susceptible to disease due to the biological monotony that occurs during the cloning process. The banana that was around during the 1950s was a much tastier, stronger fruit than the one in our fruit bowls today. They bruised less easily and had a sweeter taste.

Now, however, the Cavendish is in danger of becoming extinct because of its own lack of genetic variation, "leaving them...highly vulnerable to disease" (Wotipka). A disease called Black Sigatoka is a fungus that impedes plant growth by 50 percent or more, which diminishes the amount of fruit that a plant can produce.

Therefore, the citizens of the US, each of whom consumes 26.2 pounds of this banana species each year, may be looking at another shift in the characteristics of their most-sought-after fruit.

 This is the kind of thing that college lends its students. When we get excited about the things that we are studying, we bring them home and share them with the people around us. Then, those people learn them and are able to put them to good use elsewhere in their lives. Friends are able to discuss rather obscure and potentially yawn-provoking material in a way that is conversational and more relevant to their listeners. Most of my friends know the rules of grammar better than they probably would have otherwise preferred if it wasn't for my sharing it with them as often as I can. But now, we joke about and play with words and grammar, which makes education more fun and more useful.

Click Here to read Katharine Mieszkowski's story, When Bananas Ruled the World