Purple tomatoes

Lately a team from the John Innes Centre have received a regulatory approval for making their genetically modified tomatoes a product in US markets. The team have created a new kind of tomato that will live 2 times longer on a store shelf than a regular one by incorporating genes from snapdragons into DNA of tomato and making it rich in anthocyanins. Anthocyanins are compounds naturally occurring in blue or purple fruits, so when the team made a tomato with high-levels of those compound, not only the tomato became purple, but they have discovered that anthocyanins are the source of many advantages like long shelf-life, protection from UV damage and pathogens, lowering risk of type 2 diabetes, cancer and dementia in humans. There is also a study where cancer-prone mice fed with purple tomatoes have lived 30% longer than the mice who ate regular tomatoes. Personally speaking, that piece of news sounds pretty exciting and I can’t wait to see if purple tomatoes will become a wanted product, because they may have many health benefits, but we still don’t know what they taste like. Also the fact that they’re genetically modified might be off-putting to many people, so it’s hard to tell if people will pursue them as healthy. But in the end I hope this product will turn out tasty and popular, because there’s never too much of nutritious foods in the market.

link:

https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-the-purple-tomato-and-why-its-success-is-a-win-for-gm-foods-194107