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UK scientists have used gene-editing technology to create a souped-up tomato containing as much vitamin D as two eggs or a serving of tuna.
The development comes in the same week the government will propose a change in the law that will make it easier to develop and sell gene-edited crops.
Scientists at the John Innes Centre in Norwich created the tomato by switching off one of its genes.
Tomatoes naturally produce lots of the chemical pre-cursor of vitamin D but the plants normally use this to make other biochemicals they need.
By deleting the gene that carries out this chemistry in the plant, the researchers boosted levels of the vitamin D precursor. Ordinary sunlight falling on the leaves and the fruit then turns the chemical into Vitamin D3.
“Forty percent of Europeans have vitamin D insufficiency and so do one billion people worldwide,” said Professor Cathie Martin, who led the research published today in the journal Nature Plants.
“Tomatoes could be developed as a plant-based sustainable source of vitamin D3,” she said.
Gene editing (GE) is fundamentally different to traditional genetic modification or GM technologies. Most GM products contain a synthetic gene, or a gene from another organism inserted into the plant or animal of interest.
Insect-resistant cotton and soybeans for example, which are widely grown around the world, contain a gene originally found in bacteria.
Gene editing, by contrast, changes the characteristics of an animal or plant by deleting, swapping or repeating genes already present in the organism’s genetic code.
Currently, UK legislation – copied over from European law – does not distinguish between GM and GE and makes it virtually impossible to bring genetically modified products to market.
On Wednesday they government is introducing the Genetic Technologies (precision breeding) Bill which aims to massively curb regulations around gene editing. The aim is to reduce time it would take to bring a gene edited product…
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Source : skynews
