Red, round and plump : that is how we picture tomatoes. But its genome can give us a very different picture of many favourite fruit... or is it a vegetable?
Indeed, before its encounter with humans, in pre-Colombian America, the tomato was a simple reddish berry. When it came to berries, the ancient Meso - Americans, bigger seemed to have assumed that bigger was better. The domestication process that tomato underwent with them selected eventually two mutations in the fw2.2 and YABBY genes, both controlling the numbers of carpel – the parts of the flower that eventually develop in the compartments of the fruit. The effects were drastic as some domesticated tomatoes are now 1000 time larger than their wild ancestors. Try to picture the humans of 5000 years ago evolving into 50 tons giants along the ages...
But the gardeners of today are not as patients as before, nor as limited. Molecular biologists decided that the tomato could use a touch of... flower. Simple as that: they inserted two transgenes from a snapdragon in a tomato’s genome. Del and Ros1N created a tomato expressing a flower’s anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants, which also turns the tomato bright purple. Original, delicious, and healthy: who could ask for more?
For further reading :
Cong et al. 2008, Nature Gen., 40(6), 800-4
Butelli et al. 2008, Nature Biotech, 26(11), 1301-8
Indeed, before its encounter with humans, in pre-Colombian America, the tomato was a simple reddish berry. When it came to berries, the ancient Meso - Americans, bigger seemed to have assumed that bigger was better. The domestication process that tomato underwent with them selected eventually two mutations in the fw2.2 and YABBY genes, both controlling the numbers of carpel – the parts of the flower that eventually develop in the compartments of the fruit. The effects were drastic as some domesticated tomatoes are now 1000 time larger than their wild ancestors. Try to picture the humans of 5000 years ago evolving into 50 tons giants along the ages...
But the gardeners of today are not as patients as before, nor as limited. Molecular biologists decided that the tomato could use a touch of... flower. Simple as that: they inserted two transgenes from a snapdragon in a tomato’s genome. Del and Ros1N created a tomato expressing a flower’s anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants, which also turns the tomato bright purple. Original, delicious, and healthy: who could ask for more?For further reading :
Cong et al. 2008, Nature Gen., 40(6), 800-4
Butelli et al. 2008, Nature Biotech, 26(11), 1301-8
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