University of Chicago Scientists have used a human gene associated with obesity to produce massively huge potatoes, opening up the possibility of using other types of animal and human genese to engineer more efficient grown foods for humans.
Scientists Splice Human Gene Into Potatoes to Make Them Grow Huge
From futurism.com
2021-08-23 17:47:29
Dan Robitzski
Excerpt:
A team of scientists found an unusual trick for growing bigger, heartier crops: inserting a human gene related to obesity and fat mass into plants to supersize their harvest.
Splicing potatoes with the human gene that encodes a fat-regulating protein called FTO, which essentially alters the genetic code to rapidly mass-produce proteins, made otherwise identical potato plants grow crops that were 50 percent larger, Smithsonian Magazine reports. By growing more food without taking up more space for agriculture, the scientists say their work could help fight global hunger — without adding to its climate impact.
“It [was] really a bold and bizarre idea,” University of Chicago chemist Chuan He, coauthor of a paper published in Nature Biotechnology, told Smithsonian. “To be honest, we were probably expecting some catastrophic effects.”
