The investigators used Gardenia jasminoides, an ornamental plant from traditional Chinese medicine that has small amounts of crocin and related compounds in the flowers. The strikingly yellow crocins come from the cleavage of carotenoids, and like all biochemical reactions is catalyzed – made fast enough – by the action of specific enzymes (carotenoid cleavage dioxygenases). The situation was ripe for a biotech solution, borrowing a bit of biochemistry from another species.īiotech poised for H2 recovery as stocks rise amid quarterly results, M&A activity (GILD) | Seeking Alpha In the plants, carotenoids protect chloroplasts, enabling photosynthesis.īut harvesting and processing hand-picked stigmas of Crocus sativa to get the saffron is labor intensive and the plant only grows in a few areas of the Mediterranean and Asia. We require these “phytonutrients” to activate vitamin A and for their antioxidant properties – a human body cannot synthesize them. The research appears in Plant Biotechnology Journal.Ĭarotenoids provide the classic orange color of carrots and the hues of many other vegetables as well as fruits and flowers. These approaches are more true to nature than previous work that produced the plant pigment for study in cells of E. Now, Salim Al-Babili and colleagues at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia have borrowed genes from a common gardenia plant to make the spice in cultured lemon lumps and leaves of a tobacco relative.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |