Mexican researchers develop tomato that decreases hypertension
Hypertension affects 30 percent of the world population, according to the World Health Organization. Thus, the researchers looked at scientific literature to search for proteins that help reduce hypertension and devised a way to incorporate the protein in tomatoes, which is a popular fruit globally.
The team extracted the desired protein from amaranth, expressed it into tomato, and fed the GE tomatoes to hypertensive rats in the laboratory. Results showed that the amarantin from GE tomatoes had therapeutic effects similar with captopril, a common drug for hypertensive patients.
The next stage of the project will include testing of the GE tomato on humans.
Source: International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications