The School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), in collaboration with the Institut de Biologie Molรฉculaire des Plantes (CNRS, Strasbourg, France), has identified a new strategy to simultaneously enhance health-promoting vitamin E by ~6-fold and double both provitamin A and lycopene contents in tomatoes, to significantly boost antioxidant properties.
The research group manipulated the plant isoprenoid pathway through the utilization of a variant of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A synthase (HMGS). The overexpression of HMGS in tomatoes increased not only phytosterols, squalene, provitamin A and lycopene, but also vitamin E (ฮฑ-tocopherol) by 494%.
The HMGS DNA used in these experiments originated from a food crop, Brassica juncea (Indian mustard), that yields edible leaves, stems and seeds, the latter used in vegetable oil production.
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Although there were no differences in the appearance and size of the transformed tomato fruits, total carotenoids including provitamin A and lycopene increased drastically by 169% and 111%, respectively, as observed by a deeper colour of carotenoid extracts in S359A tomatoes over the control. Furthermore, these carotenoid extracts exhibited 89.5-96.5% higher antioxidant activity than the control. Besides carotenoids, the transformed tomatoes displayed elevations in vitamin E (ฮฑ-tocopherol, 494%), squalene (210%), and phytosterols (94%).
[Editor’s note: Read the full study]
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.ย Read full, original post:ย HKU Researchers Generate Tomatoes With Enhanced Antioxidant Properties By Genetic Engineering
