Rotten tomatoes no more: growing sweeter tomatoes is possible by editing just two of the fruit's genes. Deleting the genes increased the engineered fruits' glucose and fructose levels by up to 30% over mass-produced tomatoes, according to a study1 published today in Nature. Better yet, the gene-edited tomatoes weigh roughly the same as those sold now, and the plants produce as much fruit as do current varieties. These findings could not only help to improve tomatoes worldwide but are also an important step forward in understanding how fruits produce and store sugar, the authors write. This study is 'great and significant in its field and beyond', says Christophe Rothan, a fruit biologist at the French National Institute of Agricultural Research in Paris, who was not involved in the study. It raises the 'possibility of using the great genetic diversity existing in wild species, which has been partially lost in domesticated varieties, to improve modern varieties', he says. More than...
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