Scientists Joyce Van Eck and Sarika Gupta discovered a way to accelerate tomato engineering. The process is to insert DNA into the genome of the tomato to grow a whole new tomato plant. They do this by adding the hormone auxin, auxin speeds up the growth of tomatoes. Transformed cells are transported onto a plant regeneration medium that has nutrients and hormones. The nutrients and hormones act on the tissues of the tomato plant to create a small tomato plantlet. The plant is then taken to a root induction medium to grow roots effectively, and then planted in a greenhouse. Tomato engineering used to use soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens to speed up growth. Once Joyce Van Eck and Sarika Gupta used auxin for tomato growth, the process was sped up from 17 weeks to 11 weeks.
I learned that tomato engineering can be sped up through hormones. I did not realize before how effective hormones can be and the effect they have on plants. I learned the process used to genetically engineer tomato plants and that different hormones can have significantly different effects on the same plant.
I find this article interesting because tomatoes are commonly used for research and the fact that production can go sufficiently quicker excites me. I feel interested to continue reading plant engineering articles to see what other advancements have happened to yield more plants in shorter time.
Is their any sort of evidence that the nutrition within the tomato decreases? It could be possible that speeding up the process of growing a tomato can limit the amount of nutrition in the tomatoes.
ReplyDelete-K.M.
From that specific article it does not talk about whether or not the nutritional value decreases due to there being a shorter grow time. Although, from what I have read about engineered plants and their nutritional values I have seen that when changing a vegetable or fruit to say have more of one vitamin/mineral will sometimes cause them to produce less of another vitamin/mineral as an unintended consequence. There are many times intended and unintended consequences of genetically modifying food. So I think that there is definitely a possibility of a decrease in some of the nutritional value of the tomato but there is also a possibility of there not being any significant change in nutritional value as well. Also I think a change in the nutritional value would come more so from changes in genes rather than the shorter grow time.-D.B.
ReplyDeleteIs this plant a GMO? Is this DNA that is 'inserted' into the plants originally found in tomatoes? Or is this a transformed plant using some other DNA? Or is this only using hormones to aid in the growth of the plant? It really isn't clear whether or not the plant genes were altered. -K.N
ReplyDeleteI briefly looked up the hormone mentioned, auxin. It seems auxin is found in all plants. Unfortunately I can't find this article, but it seems to me that this is not a GMO but that they are using hormones to speed up the process.
DeleteMatt N.
I am always interested in science regarding food and its production. I have heard in the past that the earth could produce much more food and sustain a larger population if we could utilize our grow area and efficiently use what we have. This article sounds like a step in that direction. If tomato maturation time can be cut down so drastically and start producing food more quickly, imagine what else they can do or will do with food production. I know that concerns of GMOs and other "organic" issues arise when talking about this but I am pretty sure that the millions in the world that go hungry do not care if their food is genetically modified or not.
ReplyDelete- Alex G.
Is the nutritional value of the tomatoes that are injected with the hormones still the same, or does it decrease? Also, I'm wondering if this affects the duration of how long it takes for the tomatoes to go bad? This is a really interesting article. I didn't realize you could speed up the growth of plants by injecting them with hormones.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem to me that it would be the same, but your questions are good points. I think that further research would need to be done before they could make any conclusions on this, and see if it affected the plants over time or something.
DeleteMatt N.
Hormones and tomatoes. I personally hate tomatoes, so I don't really care about their growth or how fast they grow....but I do like ketchup occasional. Plus it is fascinating that we have the medical technology and capacity to learn about specific enzymes in specific organisms that do specific things.
ReplyDeleteI think this is interesting how tomatoes can be genetically modified like it states in the article. What are some of the benefits or outcomes of genetically modifying plants? What are some benefits that have been seen in the past due to this technology?
ReplyDelete-A.S.
The idea that you can decrease the growth time of a plant is amazing. Growing a garden is something that is extremely hard, especially when you live somewhere with a short growth time. If the scientist who did this experiment could sell the seeds they could help give people a chance to get fresh vegetables to places that can't grow them that fast.
ReplyDeleteHS