Modern Peanut's Wild Cousin, Thought Extinct, Found in Andes | Hacker News Reader

Modern Peanut's Wild Cousin, Thought Extinct, Found in Andes

scientificamerican.com

99 pointsdiodorus17 comments

Related, something I learned last week when I hosted a beer-tasting baby shower for a mate.

The difference between an Ale and a Lager comes from the different yeast used in each type (the Lager yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus will ferment at lower temperatures - so if you were also once taught that 'temperature' was the difference between the two, you were mostly correct).

But while Ales have a long history over thousands of years, Lagers only appeared in human history in the 1500s. Why was this?

Turns out the Lager yeast, like the peanut, is a cross. In Lager's case, its genomes are a cross between the Ale yeast S. cerevisiae and a South American yeast S. eubayanus. Exploration of the Americas somehow tracked S. eubayanus back to Europe (most notably, Pilzn Czech Republic) where it interbred and was 'discovered'.

I don't actually like peanuts, but I do prefer a Lager over an Ale.

[1] More info http://www.popsci.com.au/science/beersci-what-is-the-differe...

I prefer Ales, but there's another "variety" I'm very fond of - Belgian Lambic beers[0]. They're brewed using wild yeasts instead of the brewer's, and have a really special (sour) taste. Try the unblended ones if you get the chance, otherwise a Gueuze or a Kriek will do (avoid the fruit ones though).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambic

While I wouldn't say I'm fond of them, Lambics are definitely an excellent beer to explore and a must for any beer lover. I had a long weekend in Belgium a few years ago, which included many, many beer tastings. My beautiful wife and I had other clear favourites, but the Lambic brewery we stumbled upon in Brussels is the one we talk about the most.

[Edit] This is the one we visited - http://www.cantillon.be/br/3_1

From memory I enjoyed the Faro most - you could only drink it on site, because the sugar content was so high it was liable to explode if transported roughly.

Hopefully it's not too pedantic to mention: the sourness of Lambics has nothing to do with the wild yeasts, but rather lactobacillus bacteria. Either way, it's really cool how some unique brewing processes shaped the style (mainly, cooling the wort in large shallow coolships, giving plenty of time and surface area for yeasts and bacteria to inoculate from the environment).

The article says that the modern peanut has 20 chromosomes, whereas its ancestors each had 10. At least in animal hybridization, the hybrid chromosome amount lies between that of the two parents. So what's up with that? Wikipedia mentions "doubling."

At a guess, peanut is probably tetraploid, with four copies of each gene instead of two. (Polyploidy is common in plants)

> (Polyploidy is common in plants)

Especially crops.

It's very usual in plants to have a weird number of copies of the chromosomes. I remember a very detailed submission from a few years ago, but I can't find it.

I think that the relevant Wikipedia page is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyploid#Plants and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyploid#Allopolyploidy .

As others observed this is a common condition in plants (where repeated hybridizations can result in even higher ploidy conditions, e.g. tetraploid wheat, sexaploid sedums).

But as you ask, why isn't it observed as often in animals, or indeed at all in mammals? One argument is that plants generally feature fewer tissue types, and their anatomy shows less interdependency of parts: they have a body plan of repeated units showing some redundancy. (Cutting off a branch is not like cutting off a leg.)

In other words, by many metrics of organismal complexity, plants are less complex than animals, such that their developmental programmes can "tolerate" relatively major disruptions to genomic organization.

There are some insights in this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15780745

Wow, this kind of writing appears even in scientific journals:

"Stampfer’s work found that people who ate peanuts and nuts regularly were less likely to die from any cause"

So nuts prevent death?

Perhaps Death has a nut allergy?

arxiv makes it virtually impossible to publish unaffiliated but stuff like this makes it on a supposedly reputable website

Is it tasty? I want to eat this peanut.

It would be also intersting to see if its saltier than a regular peanut. THough granted I guess it depends where the peanut/peanut clone was grown.

This absolutely requires a cartoon featuring Mr. Peanut, in all his top-hat and monocle glory leading an expedition into the Andes and discovering his long lost cousin who left home forever ago as an act of defiance as an adolescent.

That would require a musical number, with at least a ... division of Cub Scouts singing "Found A Peanut."

K... The only thing I want to know is do they taste good? Haha no where is that mentioned in the article!!

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