homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Engineered tomatoes can help fight world hunger by producing cheap, eco-friendly vitamin D3

Right now, people get most of their D3 vitamin from animal products in their diet.

Alexandru Micu
May 23, 2022 @ 7:53 pm

share Share

Researchers are working on taking cholesterol out of the tomato — and putting a precursor of vitamin D3 in there, instead.

Image credits Nähe Bonn.

Vitamin D is an important compound for the healthy development and maintenance of our bodies. It is directly involved in the absorption of several important elements in the intestines and our bodies’ ability to use calcium. However, very few food items contain meaningful levels of this compound, and plants are especially poor in this regard. People get some of their vitamin D3 needs through their skin, where the compound is synthesized under exposure to sunlight, but we still rely heavily on diet for this compound.

A team of European researchers is aiming to change that, however, by modifying tomatoes to reduce their cholesterol content and increase the levels of provitamin D3, a precursor molecule of the vitamin, they produce naturally. Their approach involved genetically engineering the plants to block the action of an enzyme that transforms the provitamin into cholesterol.

Tomato 2.0

Deficiencies of Vitamin D are an important cause of global health issues worldwide. Such deficiencies can lead to an increased risk of developing conditions or diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s, or dementia. An estimated one billion people worldwide suffer from complications caused by vitamin D deficiency, the authors explain.

For the study, the team edited a gene in tomatoes that encodes the 7-dehydrocholesterol (7-DHC)reductase enzyme. This substance works to convert provitamin D3 into cholesterol.

“[The precursor] 7-DHC is present in leaves and immature green fruits but not in ripe fruit, which is most consumed,” the paper explains.

In the skin, provitamin D3 is converted into vitamin D3 by exposure to UV light. According to the team’s measurements, the amount of provitamin D3 contained in one of their modified tomato fruits is equivalent to the amount of vitamin D3 — were it to be transformed — contained in two medium-sized eggs or 28 grams of tuna. The modified tomato fruits could, therefore, satisfy the daily vitamin D3 requirements for children as well as adults.

The team notes that their modifications do not lead to any notable impact on the plant’s rate of development or on total yield.

Such a development is particularly exciting as people primarily source vitamin D3 from animal products in their diet. These products tend to be more expensive and more difficult to store and commercialize than plant products, meaning fewer people tend to have access to them. They are also more resource-intensive to produce, putting an outsized strain on our environment compared to plants such as cereals, vegetables, or fruits.

Combating world hunger is one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and vitamin D3 is a vital micronutrient that can be hard to come by through poorer diets. Ensuring that people have a cheap source of vitamin D3 would go a long way toward combating world hunger. Having such an option be plant-based would be ideal, as it would also help protect the environment from the strain of our food production industries — a strain which will only magnify as populations increase and diets diversify.

The paper “Biofortified tomatoes provide a new route to vitamin D sufficiency” has been published in the journal Nature.

share Share

How Hot is the Moon? A New NASA Mission is About to Find Out

Understanding how heat moves through the lunar regolith can help scientists understand how the Moon's interior formed.

This 5,500-year-old Kish tablet is the oldest written document

Beer, goats, and grains: here's what the oldest document reveals.

A Huge, Lazy Black Hole Is Redefining the Early Universe

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a massive, dormant black hole from just 800 million years after the Big Bang.

Did Columbus Bring Syphilis to Europe? Ancient DNA Suggests So

A new study pinpoints the origin of the STD to South America.

The Magnetic North Pole Has Shifted Again. Here’s Why It Matters

The magnetic North pole is now closer to Siberia than it is to Canada, and scientists aren't sure why.

For better or worse, machine learning is shaping biology research

Machine learning tools can increase the pace of biology research and open the door to new research questions, but the benefits don’t come without risks.

This Babylonian Student's 4,000-Year-Old Math Blunder Is Still Relatable Today

More than memorializing a math mistake, stone tablets show just how advanced the Babylonians were in their time.

Sixty Years Ago, We Nearly Wiped Out Bed Bugs. Then, They Started Changing

Driven to the brink of extinction, bed bugs adapted—and now pesticides are almost useless against them.

LG’s $60,000 Transparent TV Is So Luxe It’s Practically Invisible

This TV screen vanishes at the push of a button.

Couple Finds Giant Teeth in Backyard Belonging to 13,000-year-old Mastodon

A New York couple stumble upon an ancient mastodon fossil beneath their lawn.