PURPLE tomatoes will certainly jazz up a ratatouille but they could also protect against cancer.
All tomato plants have the genes to produce anthocyanins – purple pigments found in blueberries that mop up cancer-causing free radicals – but they are dormant. To activate them, Eugenio Butelli’s team from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, inserted two genes from the snapdragon flower. The resulting fruit increased the lifespans of mice engineered to have cancer (Nature Biotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/nbt.1506).
Previous attempts to engineer tomatoes with anthocyanins produced low levels in the skin only, says Butelli. His team’s tomatoes have high levels throughout…
