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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: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:19PM
When I say in the short term we can fix stupid by investing in education:
* We can't fix a biological mental defect
* We CAN fix a lot of the stupid which we currently have in our society
* We cannot turn everyone into gifted geniuses
That's all I meant.
I have a mild form of aspbergers. I can hyperfocus to a degree. Poor people skills. Good machine skills. There are probably others on SN who could relate to that.
People skills, to a degree CAN be learned. On my latest reviews I get comments like I could coach others in how to resolve conflicts . . . that's a surprise to me, but I've been doing what I do for decades. I proactively look to resolve conflicts. From personal experience, whenever there is a conflict, two people are not really seeing each other's perspective. Once everyone's concern it taken into consideration -- often in some kind of design decision -- the end result is even better than what either one person was proposing. The improved solution addresses the problems seen by both people. I also point out that we're on the same team, we have the same goal: to maximize our bonuses. Which at the end of the day means making the company profitable, successful, keeping customers happy, getting more customers, etc.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.