UK scientists at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have found a new way of producing enormous quantities of natural compounds efficiently by growing them in tomatoes. These compounds are believed to help in combating life-threatening ailments as well as in extending human lifespan.
The phenylpropanoid compounds like Resveratrol, which is found in wine, was found to extend lifespan in animal studies. Genistein is another compound, which is found in soybean, known to play a significant role in reducing the risk of steroid-hormone related cancers such as breast cancer.
The study authors also researched on the effects of a protein called AtMYB12, which is found in Arabidopsis thaliana plant in the UK. This plant was used as model for the scientific research.
It was found that the protein AtMYB12 triggers a set of broad genes that are involved in the metabolic pathways and responsible for the production of natural compounds that are useful to the plant. The protein can monitor the production of natural compounds, based on the quantity of the protein present.
When introduced in the tomato plant, the protein enhanced the production of natural compounds by enhancing phenylpropanoid production and to control the amount of carbon and energy that the plant used in the production of these compounds.
With the presence of the protein, the tomato plant began creating more phenylpropanoids and flavanoids and to invest more energy in this process in the tomato.
The result of the introduction of this protein and the genes from plants encoding enzymes in tomatoes saw that the fruit could produce as much as 80mg of novel compound per gram of dry weight.
Tomatoes can be grown cheaply and are high-yielding crops with relatively few inputs. They can be produced around 500 tonnes per hectare in a few countries. With the production of natural compounds like Resveratrol or Genistein in tomatoes, dependence on artificial synthesis can be markedly reduced.
Tomatoes can be juiced to extract the valuable compounds from them and by themselves, tomatoes can become a source of medicinal marvel and nutritional abundance.
Hence, the method is being studied to come up with a cost-effective way of producing medicinal compounds than produce them by blending with artificial compounds that are currently being extracted from natural sources such as grapes and soybeans, reported The Independent.
John Innes Centre co-author Dr Yang Zhang said: ""Medicinal plants with high value are often difficult to grow and manage, and need very long cultivation times to produce the desired compounds. Our research provides a fantastic platform to quickly produce these valuable medicinal compounds in tomatoes. Target compounds could be purified directly from tomato juice.
"We believe our design idea could also be applied to other compounds such as terpenoids and alkaloids, which are the major groups of medicinal compounds from plants."
John Innes Centre professor Cathie Martin was quoted as saying: "Our study provides a general tool for producing valuable phenylpropanoid compounds on an industrial scale in plants, and potentially production of other products derived from aromatic amino acids.
"Our work will be of interest to different research areas including fundamental research on plants, plant/microbe engineering, medicinal plant natural products, as well as diet and health research."
