Million to one apple is half red, half green

[McHrozni]

I hadn't noticed that, but you're right - at least with a visual check. Hard to say, though. Definitely not so much as 40/60%. More like 48/52%?

Impossible to say, given the angle. It could be around 40/60%, though, and it would be very hard indeed to notice 48/52% visually. It all depends on how the boundry goes on the other side.

McHrozni

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

Judging from the picture, we can't say the apple is 1/2 green and 1/2 red. It could easily be 2/5 red and 3/5 green (or vice versa).
In fact if you look at the top, you can see a very small section of the other side, and the green side seems to veer to the left, consistent with 2/5 green and 3/5 red.

McHrozni

This is true. I would actually expect a chimeric apple to be chimeric by fifths, since that's how the seeds are layed out. I'm still thinking that the burden of proof is pretty high though for this being an actual chimera, when there are plenty of other explanations.

A.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Sorry, it's one of my pet peeves, but there are bucket loads of straight lines in nature, both macro and microscopic. (Pine trees and mica flakes are two easy examples.) I've seen plenty of squash that are bicolored with the color split along a horizontal plane through the center of the squash (stem is the vertical axis), though not through the stem as claimed in this story.



Why not? My first thought was that it was a chimera with half golden delicious and half mutant. I would have expected 1/5 or 2/5 chimera rather than 1/2, as the apples grow with 5-fold symmetry, but who knows?

I'm not saying that I think that this is a real event, but I'm not immediately certain that there is something fishy going on. The article quotes people who say it is rare, but not unheard of, as well. Hrm, maybe I'll tape an apple on my tree next summer and see what comes of it; it's too late this year.

My first thought is you half submerge it in water and then expose it to etheline gas.

 

[dogjones]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...lion-to-one-apple-is-half-red-half-green.html

I'm not that familiar with the Telegraph, because I'm an Am-ur-ih-kun. Is it a reliable newspaper like the "New York Times"... or is it more like the "New York Post"... or, worse, like the "Weekly World News"?

If this is supposed to be a "true" newspiece, I'm really, really worried about the state of intelligent and responsible journalism in the U.K. That, and the general intelligence and skeptical thinking of the people referenced as "experts".

~Dr. Imago

You have 4 'reputable' national newspapers in the UK. The Telegraph, the Times, the Independent and the Guardian.

Traditionally, the Telegraph is the 'conservative' paper ("the Torygraph"), read by mostly by paternalistic men with sagging jowels, over a pipe and a sherry at the club.

The Guardian is the 'Labour' paper, read by benevolent aristocrats similar to the above, but also read by left-wing firebrands, vegetarians, gays, environmental protesters, confused people like me, and the like. Great content but terrible proofreading, hence, "The Grauniad".

The Times is/was supposed to be the 'objective' paper - no left or right wing agenda, just full of good news stories. Until Murdoch took it over. It is now largely content-free tabloid gibberish, just about getting by on its prior reputation, but people I think are catching on.

The Independent is boring. No-one reads it unless they have to. It's left on trains or planes occasionally. Probably by the same shadowy people who leave bibles in hotel rooms.

So. The apple story went down something like this. A young and impressionable 63 year old telegraph reporter was stringing for stories over a few sherrys at the club when an eager boy of 49 scampered up to him with this peculiar apple. The reporter thought "how absolutely fascinating" and immediately rang the editor, (known affectionately at his club as "the Colonel"), who, in a haze of Chateau Margaux 1953, twiddled his grizzled handlebar moustache and averred that yes, it was indeed absolutely fascinating, just the sort of interesting quirk of the English countryside that the readership would be delighted by.

The rest, as they say, is Tory.

 

[Cuddles]

Sorry, it's one of my pet peeves, but there are bucket loads of straight lines in nature, both macro and microscopic. (Pine trees and mica flakes are two easy examples.) I've seen plenty of squash that are bicolored with the color split along a horizontal plane through the center of the squash (stem is the vertical axis), though not through the stem as claimed in this story.

In addition to the point that straight lines are entirely possible in nature, there's also the rather obvious point that there are no straight lines present on this apple anyway. It's very much a jagged line, and it seems to curve to the right at the bottom, although that part could just be due to the curvature of the apple and the angle the photo was taken from.

That said, my vote goes for photoshop rather than funny ripening or shenanigans with duck tape. The red half doesn't look anything like the green half. If it was just a matter of ripening differently, both halves should still be the same variety, but the apple in the picture seems to have very different texture and patterning of its skin on the two halves. It also seems rather suspicious that it's described as being a Golden Delicious in the Telegraph article, but the green half looks much more like Granny Smith. The red half looks like a variety I recognise, but I can't remember what its name is.

On the other hand, the mutation explanation doesn't sound so implausible if you understand what the guy, who is presumably not a biologist, is actually trying to say. It's not a mutation at all, it's a chimera. Given that apples are all the same species, chimeras are certainly possible. They're uncommon, but are known to happen in many other species, including humans. I would assume they are less common in plants, since you don't have a whole bunch of different sperm all arriving at the same time, but I assume they're still possible. A chimera could certainly account for a reasonably, but not actually, straight line division, and would allow for pretty much any proportion of the apple to be red or green. Looking at the inside wouldn't help clear it up, since it could just affect the skin. This would also explain the difference in texture as well as colour between the two sides - they're actually different varieties.

Personally my vote is still with photoshop, but I think it's certainly possible, if not likely, that it's real.

 

[Lucky]

There is some rather over-enthusiastic debunking going on in this thread!

First, we can rule out the 'photoshop' suggestion. A quick google turns up several different images, from different media publications, e.g. this slideshow. These pictures also make any kind of crude fakery such as splicing or staining highly unlikely (see especially image 2 of the slideshow).

The problem with the 'inhibited ripening' theory is that it's a Golden Delicious - it's the 'unripe' portion that's the natural (ripened) colour.

As a story, it doesn't have the smell of a hoax, or a tabloid creation. We are told the name and location of the grower and the variety of the apple, and given quotes from named staff at the British Independent Fruit Growers' Association and the Royal Horticultural Society (and no, Dr Imago, there's no reason to doubt the 'general intelligence and skeptical thinking of the people referenced as "experts"').

I can't be sure that the apple wasn't doctored in some way, but I've seen no convincing evidence that it was. First, it's not especially impressive, so what would be the point? Most important, there's no reason to assume it's an impossible natural occurrence. Fruit chimeras (including apples) are a well-established phenomenon:

http://fruitforum.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/apple-chimeras-information-please/
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/suttonelms/apple71.html
http://www.pubhort.org/aps/17/v17_n3_a4.htm
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/5/5/200.pdf
(Scroll down for pictures. In this case the parent tree was grafted with a different variety - not unusual.)

 

[Old man]

http://fruitforum.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/apple-chimeras-information-please/

ETA: Oops! I didn't see Lucky's post!

 

[alfaniner]

One thing I can assume right off the bat, it is not a natural mutation.

Well, that was my initial assumption, barring any evidence to the contrary. ( I assumed it had been taped or waxed as suggested above.) However, checking the fruitforum link I was reminded that I recall seeing a similarly striped apple somewhere, and am willing to to accept the authenticity, if not the rarity.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Yeah... I'm drifting towards believing it's possible. It's hard to figure out a motive for the guy in question, and the points Lucky made were beginning to penetrate my stubbornly skeptical skull, anyway. Plus, the articles just don't have those telling marks of woo.

 

[jasonpatterson]

Is it likely that such a geometric shape appears after a one-step mutation, without any aid from natural selection?

The switch from golden delicious to red delicious is a single mutation, as I recall (though I could be wrong.) The only difference between the two is the final color.

It also seems rather suspicious that it's described as being a Golden Delicious in the Telegraph article, but the green half looks much more like Granny Smith.

This is a corrected portion of Cuddle's post. It makes much more sense now. I agree, the green part looks more like a granny smith than a golden delicious... One of the other pictures that have been linked shows a basket full of apples, at least one of them had bright red streaks.

As far as the million to one chance goes, I am with 666, I would guess that the odds of this happening naturally are far lower than one million to one. Heck, even a small city of 50,000 goes through more than a million apples a year (that would only be 20 per person per year.)

 

[Madalch]

I'm now tempted to get some unripe apples, start painting them with parafin, and exposing them to ethylene, just to see if I can get designs on them like that.

 

[Lucky]

This was featuredd in many of the UK papers a couple of weeks ago and it made the rounds of the TV stations too. If it's a "million to one" happening there must be quite a few around, considering the billions of apples grown yearly.

One of my pet 'journalese' hates is the ubiquitous "million to one" chance. I guess most journalists have trouble with both probability and big numbers, and the thinking goes something like: ... it's very unlikely, so it's ... erm ... {big number} to one ... a million is a {big number} ... one {big number} is pretty much the same as another ....

The Mail article actually quotes the Fruit Growers Association chap as saying the odds are "millions and millions to one", yet still begins by blathering about the "million to one apple".

Anyway, if you google apple + chimera you'll see that these are far from unknown. There's an explanation here:

The pale stripes or sections seen in chimeral fruits are the result of a reversion to the colour of the parent fruit and are an indication of the instability of the mutation. One can see this easily in the sport of Miller’s Seedling, known as Red Miller, in the picture above. The fruit of Miller’s Seedling is cream mottled with pinky red, while Red Miller is red all over. The Red Miller with the cream chimeral stripe is reverting to the original cream and pink Miller’s Seedling; similarly in the Queen Cox and the Royal Gala.

the striping may indicate instability of the mutation. Some genes are unstable because of ‘transposons’ – sequences of DNA that can ‘jump’ in and out of genes disrupting their natural function; however, I do not know that anyone has demonstrated ‘transposons’ in apple fruit colour genes

The newspaper articles don't favour us with any reason why this particular apple should be especially rare, but we can use the available information to think it through. It seems from some googling that we don't know the parentage of the Golden Delicious variety, but it's most unlikely to have been a sport of a 'ruby' variety, so our "million to one" apple would have to have arisen from a new 'ruby' mutation rather than a 'reversion to type'. It seems to be the fact that these new types are much rarer than reversions. I don't know whether the reasons for this are understood - perhaps the transposon explanation (I'm a long way from my field here).

@Dr. Imago and other 'skeptics': No, I'm not completely certain it's a genuine chimera - but I'd say that's by a fair way the most likely answer. Yes, I would like it to be real - not, I suppose, that it's likely to have anything significant to tell us about apple (or flowering plant) genetics, but it would just be a little bit interesting and amusing.

I'm getting tired of the parrot-cry 'photoshop!' whenever anything out of the ordinary, unexplained (or plain fake!) from the science domain turns up in the media. It's usually wrong, and in this case a minute's googling shows that 'photoshop' is absolutely the least plausible explanation. It's clear from the various news stories (assuming they aren't outright lies) that the man had to have a physical (if possibly faked) apple to show off to neighbours, the local horticultural college, and the media.

Sadly, the following is quite typical of science reporting in the UK 'quality' press:

Horticulturists say the colourings on the apple are probably caused by a random genetic mutation.

In such cases, the red side usually tastes sweeter than the green side - because it has seen more sunshine during its growth.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

This is true. I would actually expect a chimeric apple to be chimeric by fifths, since that's how the seeds are layed out. I'm still thinking that the burden of proof is pretty high though for this being an actual chimera, when there are plenty of other explanations.

A.

Since a good link to pictures of chimeric apples was posted, and they look a good deal like the 'million to one' apple, I think I'm leaning away from the 'faked' explanation, and towards the 'this happens all the time, this is what they look like, and it was a slow news day' explanation.

A.

 

[ponderingturtle]

In addition to the point that straight lines are entirely possible in nature, there's also the rather obvious point that there are no straight lines present on this apple anyway. It's very much a jagged line, and it seems to curve to the right at the bottom, although that part could just be due to the curvature of the apple and the angle the photo was taken from.

That said, my vote goes for photoshop rather than funny ripening or shenanigans with duck tape. The red half doesn't look anything like the green half. If it was just a matter of ripening differently, both halves should still be the same variety, but the apple in the picture seems to have very different texture and patterning of its skin on the two halves. It also seems rather suspicious that it's described as being a Granny Smith. The red half looks like a variety I recognise, but I can't remember what its name is.

On the other hand, the mutation explanation doesn't sound so implausible if you understand what the guy, who is presumably not a biologist, is actually trying to say. It's not a mutation at all, it's a chimera. Given that apples are all the same species, chimeras are certainly possible. They're uncommon, but are known to happen in many other species, including humans. I would assume they are less common in plants, since you don't have a whole bunch of different sperm all arriving at the same time, but I assume they're still possible. A chimera could certainly account for a reasonably, but not actually, straight line division, and would allow for pretty much any proportion of the apple to be red or green. Looking at the inside wouldn't help clear it up, since it could just affect the skin. This would also explain the difference in texture as well as colour between the two sides - they're actually different varieties.

Personally my vote is still with photoshop, but I think it's certainly possible, if not likely, that it's real.

THe thing is would the Fruit be chimerica or would the chimera be in one of the seeds? Is the fruit a result of the parent plant or the daughter plants? I think it is parent plant material. So what half the branch and half the flower were different varieties?

As for getting different kinds of apples on one tree, graphting would work fine for that.

 

[Dr. Imago]

@Dr. Imago and other 'skeptics': No, I'm not completely certain it's a genuine chimera - but I'd say that's by a fair way the most likely answer. Yes, I would like it to be real - not, I suppose, that it's likely to have anything significant to tell us about apple (or flowering plant) genetics, but it would just be a little bit interesting and amusing.

Apple flowers have 5 petals. These involute to form the remnant sepals at the apex of the fruit. In the other pictures of true chimeras, you will ineluctably see portions of 1/5th sections of the fruit being affected, and the color demarcation in the true "chimera" is not so dramatic.

In this particular picture, the fruit is divided almost perfectly in half. There appears to be an "unnatural" wavy line, probably from a not-so-perfect human tape job, dividing the fruit almost perfectly in half. This is not naturally possible, based on the above information.

This leads me to the most rational conclusion that this fruit coloration was faked. I see absolutely zero evidence to show otherwise, and ample evidence demonstrating how it could be done.

So, in this thread there was some interesting discussion about apple chimeras, but to discuss this any further as a natural possibility is a waste of time IMHO. Someone is taking the piss.

~Dr. Imago

 

[ElMondoHummus]

I'm now tempted to get some unripe apples, start painting them with parafin, and exposing them to ethylene, just to see if I can get designs on them like that.

Just remember to keep the Zippo at a distance. One inadvertent flick and you'll have roasted apple instead.

 

[quarky]

I had one that looked like Nixon on one side, and the Virgin Mary on the other.

(Wish I hadn't eaten it.)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Without reading the story, I have to chime in that symmetry like this is not unheard of. Anyone remember the half albino lobster?

My 4 o'clocks (flowers) do that all the time. They also mix in blended colors, stripes, etc., but I see nice perfect half-and-half flowers all the time.

By the way, if this were a once in a million mutation, there would be a helluva lot more of them than this one.

Just think about the numbers. . . .

ETA: I just read Dr. I's comments, and would add that the fact that I've never seen one like that before is also inductive evidence that it's a fake. Yes I have seen more than a million apples in my lifetime!

 

[ponderingturtle]

My 4 o'clocks (flowers) do that all the time. They also mix in blended colors, stripes, etc., but I see nice perfect half-and-half flowers all the time.

By the way, if this were a once in a million mutation, there would be a helluva lot more of them than this one.

Just think about the numbers. . . .

ETA: I just read Dr. I's comments, and would add that the fact that I've never seen one like that before is also inductive evidence that it's a fake. Yes I have seen more than a million apples in my lifetime!

There are several things. It seems that multi colored apples are not uncommon in some varieties. And of course are you working at an apple picking operation that has those apples?

 

[Olowkow]

http://www.magazine.uc.edu/0408/japaneseapples.htm
Wow, nature is amazing! Quick, hide the stencil!