The next time you stop by your local supermarket, take a long, hard look at the yellow bananas in the produce section. That’s because bananas might be extinct within just a few years, say Dutch researchers, and that could open the door for synthetic biologists to come up with a new, synthetically modified banana to replace the yellow Cavendish banana we’ve come to know and love.
This new, synthetically modified banana would look like a real banana and taste like a real banana and it would have almost exactly the same DNA as a real banana — except that it would be engineered in a bio-foundry by a team of technologists. This genetically engineered banana would have some of its genetic material designed or edited to behave differently than it does now.
But let’s back up for a second. Why on earth would anyone actually want to create such a Frankenbanana? It all goes back to the research findings published by the group of scientists from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, who claim that an aggressive fungus known as “Panama Disease” is at risk of wiping out the Cavendish banana – the world’s most popular banana – within a few years.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Washington Post
