Is your cheese on the verge of extinction?
21 June 2025
Reprinted from Creation.com
Several popular cheeses are on the brink. Their mould strains are not creating enough spores, as recently reported by the Laboratory of Ecology, Systematics, and Evolution at the Université Paris-Saclay.1
By constantly selecting for consistency in taste, texture, etc., cheesemakers have developed different cheeses from surprisingly similar strains of mould. For example, Brie and Camembert use Penicillium camemberti. If this name sounds familiar, the antibiotic penicillin was originally derived from other members of genus Penicillium (P. chrysogenum and P. rubens). Roquefort, yet another popular cheese, uses P. roqueforti.2
Selection for fungal strains that produce desirable cheeses occurred over centuries, but results were still inconsistent. Industrialization led to the mass production of highly specific strains, but this led to a loss of diversity. Cheesemakers effectively selected a single genetic strain for each. And now, mutations (mistakes in the genes) have built up in these strains to the point where they are barely able to reproduce. Without spores, cheesemakers cannot inoculate the next batch.
Most members of this fungal genus can reproduce sexually. That is, individual fungi can swap genes with others and the entire population can maintain a higher level of genetic variation. Some species, however, are purely asexual. The parent cells bud off exact copies of themselves. This means the results for cheesemaking are predictable, but it also means that any mutations that occur in the strain are guaranteed to be passed on. Since new mutations are then added to inherited ones, and ‘error-correcting’ mutations are rare, mutations relentlessly build up in a predictable, ratchet-like fashion.
The recent discovery that P. roqueforti can, in fact, undergo sexual reproduction means there is hope for this cheese, which is otherwise on the edge of extinction. Specifically, cheesemakers hope to cross it with the P. roqueforti strain used in a cheese called Termignon Blue. Brie and Camembert can perhaps be saved in a similar way.
Implications for creation
This new development tells us several important things about creation. First, God created sexual reproduction to maintain genetic diversity, and thus organismal robustness in general, over time. In this fallen world, sexual reproduction also prevents many harmful recessive mutations from being expressed. This is because the damaged gene is paired with the undamaged version from the other parent, which still functions.
Second, the inexorable buildup of mutations in all populations tells us that living things have a maximum lifetime on Earth. ‘Selection’, whether natural or artificial, can only remove variation. It cannot create anything new. Yet, when combined with mutation, we do not see the ‘onward and upward’ changes demanded by evolution. Instead, we see species slowly degrading.3
Sexual reproduction is helpful in slowing the decline, but even that is not enough over time to keep species alive, let alone allow them to ‘evolve’. Instead of supporting evolution, the data are pointing toward Creation and the Fall.
References and notes
- Harmi, M., French cheese under threat, news.cnrs.fr, 16 Jan 2024.
- Ropars, J. et al., Sex in cheese: evidence for sexuality in the fungus Penicillium roqueforti, PLOS ONE 7(11):e49665, 2012.
- Price, P., Genetic entropy: the silent killer, Creation 41(4):48–50, 2019; creation.com/genetic-entropy-vs-evolution.
