Gene Tweaks Promise Vitamin Drenched Food

Makarand writes "Scientists have identified a gene in ripe strawberries that holds the promise of creating vitamin-drenched food of the future according to this article in the Taipei Times. The gene encodes an enzyme in strawberry plants that helps to convert a protein called D-galacturonic acid to vitamin C. In a recent study, the same gene tweaked to overexpress the enzyme in a weed called thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), the plant equivalent of the laboratory mouse, churned out two or three times the normal amounts of vitamin C. The study suggests that other plants that use these genes can be engineered to have high vitamin levels."

Comments

Effects in other foods

[YDdraig]

I'd quite like them to figure out what it is in strawberries that I'm lethally allergic to before they go adding bits of it to other foods.

Ripe?

[mshiltonj]

Scientists have identified a gene in ripe strawberries

Woudn't this gene also be in raw -- and even rotten -- strawberries?

Vitamin C is sour

[A55M0NKEY]

Ascorbic acid ( vitamin C ) is sour. I really don't think a sour loaf of bread or sour milk or cheese or beef of brocolli or eggs would taste good. Most sour foods are fruits and already have plenty of vitamin C so I don't see many foods where this would taste right and be useful.