Golden potatoes
Geneticists from the USA have created a GMO potato of "golden" color
American geneticists have created a new variety of GMO potatoes with an unusual golden color and rich in vitamin A and vitamin E, according to an article published in the journal PLoS One (Chitchumroonchokchai et al., Potential of golden potatoes to improve vitamin A and vitamin E status in developing countries).
"Residents of many countries of the world today suffer from "nutrient hunger", since agricultural crops today are focused on maximum yield and "inedibility" for pests, and not on high nutritional value. Our golden potatoes can contain many times more trace elements and vitamins than the food that these people constantly eat," said Mark Failla from Ohio University in Columbus.
Photo from the press release of “Golden” potato delivers
bounty of vitamins A and E – VM).
In recent years, geneticists have created several dozen species of transgenic plants and animals whose DNA has been modified not to protect them from parasites and pests, but so that they produce more useful substances.
For example, last year geneticists presented the world with "purple" potatoes rich in vitamin C and antioxidants, and a little earlier they created new varieties of rice containing a large amount of protein, and tomatoes containing resveratrol – a substance that protects the brain from Alzheimer's disease and rejuvenates the rest of the body.
Failla and his colleagues have created a new variety of "colored" potatoes, trying to make it more useful for the health of residents of countries whose diet contains relatively little vitamin A and vitamin E. Such states, as scientists note, include many countries in Asia and Latin America, where ordinary potatoes, which actually do not have either vitamin, are the main component of almost all dishes.
Scientists eliminated this problem by inserting into the DNA of ordinary varietal potatoes, popular today among American farmers, the genes of the bacterium Erwinia herbicola, responsible for the synthesis of beta-carotene and alpha-tocopherol, "billets" of vitamins A and E.
As a result, the appearance of the potato changed, and its flesh acquired a golden color, and the concentrations of future vitamins increased several dozen times for vitamin E, and thousands of times for vitamin A. After testing these potatoes on samples of saliva and gastric juice, scientists confirmed that these vitamins will be well absorbed by the human and animal body.
A portion of mashed potatoes from such potatoes, as scientists say, will give the child about half of his daily allowance of vitamin A, and a third of the required amount of vitamin E. In the future, when these potatoes will pass all the mandatory procedures for checking their safety, scientists hope that it will help residents of many developing and simply poor countries to get rid of permanent vitamin deficiency.
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