Sugar content of cultivated tomatoes increased by 30% by editing two genes to suppress sugar content
Tomatoes, native to South America, were originally small in size but sweet. However, during the process of agricultural production, breed improvements were made for higher yields, and while the size increased by about 10 to 100 times, the sugar content dropped significantly.
Two genes that put the brakes on sugar production in modern, cultivated tomatoes with reduced sugar content were discovered. As a result of suppressing the expression of these genes using gene editing technology, they succeeded in producing cultivated tomatoes with the natural sweetness of wild tomatoes. This is what the British Guardian reported based on a paper by Chinese researchers published in Nature on the 13th (local time).
“Farmers want bigger tomatoes and higher yields, while consumers want sweeter tomatoes,” said Huang Sanwen, director of the Agricultural Genomics Research Institute of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Shenzhen, China. “The sugar-braking genes we discovered could break the negative relationship between yield and quality by breeding sweeter tomatoes without sacrificing the size and yield of cultivated tomatoes,” he said.
For the first time, the research team compared the genomes of wild and cultivated tomatoes and discovered two genes related to the high sugar content of wild tomatoes. They discovered that these genes, which are widely distributed in wild tomatoes, have mostly disappeared from modern domesticated varieties.
Through further research, the researchers discovered that the genome of cultivated tomatoes produces an enzyme that destroys the enzymes that produce sugar within cells. On the other hand, the genome discovered in wild tomatoes restricted the production of this enzyme, resulting in high sugar content.
The research team succeeded in producing tomatoes with up to 30% higher sugar content by precisely editing the DNA of cultivated tomatoes using CRISPR-Cas9, a gene editing tool, to prevent these braking genes from functioning properly. There was no significant difference in fruit weight or yield. The gene-edited tomatoes had fewer and lighter seeds, but they germinated normally.
The researchers said that these two genes appear to suppress sugar production during fruit ripening to ensure sufficient energy for seed development. Director Hwang said the new tomatoes could be sold in supermarkets within three to five years, and also mentioned the fact that other gene-edited tomatoes are already being sold in Japan.
The paper can be found at the following link:
Source: kormedi.com
