Genetically modified foods have racked up a bad reputation among organic food proponents and conventional grocery shoppers alike. It's become such a hot topic that supermarket chains such as Whole Foods are agreeing to label GMO foods and giant manufacturers like General Mills are boasting their products like Cheerios as non-GMO. But researchers and scientists have developed a genetically modified tomato that could help fight diseases like cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's. According to the Mirror, a new group of supercharged GM tomatoes are packed with natural chemicals that battles illness. One variety contains more than 50 times the antioxidant resveratrol as a bottle of wine while another has the same amount of genistein—a soybean compound that could prevent breast cancer—as 5.5 pounds of tofu.
Scientists are bolstering the fruit with medicinal properties by way of the protein AtMYB12, which is typically found in the weed thale cress. By adding this protein to tomatoes, its levels of phenylpropanoids, a family of organic compounds that increases a range of plant chemicals, completely spike. From there, genes that encode specific enzymes are added to ramp up production of resveratrol and/or genistein.
Researchers believe that these tomatoes are a much more cost- and time-effective method of producing valuable plant chemicals than artificially creating them or tediously extracting them from where they naturally occur, like in grapes and soybeans. In the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communication, co-author Dr. Yang Zhang writes, "Medicinal plants with high value are often difficult to grow and manage, and need very long cultivation times to produce the desired compounds. Our research provides a fantastic platform to quickly produce these valuable medicinal compounds in tomatoes."
Source from : http://www.delish.com/food-news/a44558/gmo-tomato-fights-cancer-diabetes-alzheimers/
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