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Gene editing could create spicy tomatoes, say researchers
Spicy tomatoes could soon be on the menu thanks to the rise of genome-editing technology, say researchers. It is not the first time experts have claimed the techniques could help to precisely and rapidly develop fruits and vegetables with unusual traits: scientists have already been looking at changing the colour of kiwi fruits and tweaking the taste of strawberries.
But researchers in Brazil and Ireland say such methods also could offer practical advantages, with spicy tomatoes offering a way of harvesting capsaicinoids, the pungent chemicals found in chilli peppers.
[...] Tomatoes and chilli peppers developed from a common ancestor but diverged about 19m years ago. "All the genes to produce capsaicinoids exist in the tomato, they are just not active," Zsögön said.
Capsaicinoids: Pungency beyond Capsicum (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2018.11.001) (DX)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:36PM (1 child)
OK. But their food is only adequate in quality. I've had lots worse, but I've also had a lot better.
That said, these days I avoid both due to starches. And they could have either improved or deteriorated...but I doubt it, as they were pretty much at "commodity level".
OTOH, I can't really judge their tomatoes, as the only tomatoes I ate there were combined into a sauce.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:56PM
Same here. One of my family's close friends had a mom-n-pop Italian restaurant; were I of a mind to be snobbish, I could turn up my nose at most Italian eateries just based on the cooking I was privileged to enjoy there until I moved elsewhere and my career began to eat me up instead. But I just like good food... I'm perfectly okay with a fairly wide range of tastes and approaches. Some of it might be legitimately poor, but some of it is just a matter of taste. No point in going all nuts about it, I guess. And there's always the next meal.
For me at least, there's often a distinct difference in the taste of a sauce based on the quality of the tomatoes used to make that sauce. We make our own with our own tomatoes at home here in the summer and fall; in the winter, we make do with store-bought tomatoes. Not quite up for an indoor garden. If nothing else, it's a reason to look forward to our next pickable batch.
When we're out of town, the only practical option for us is a visit to a restaurant. And I'll try any restaurant once if someone I trust likes it and tells me so. For instance, that's how we found Johnny Carino's [carinos.com], and that was a definite win. Until the local franchise closed. Sigh.
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They said: "You weren't listening, were you?"
I thought: "Isn't that a weird way to start a conversation?"