Tomatoes, But With a ‘D’

A team of international scientists developed a way to edit the genetic makeup of tomatoes to turn them into a robust source of Vitamin D, according to a peer-reviewed paper published this week.

• Low vitamin D levels are associated with a multitude of conditions – from cancer to cardiovascular disease – and affect roughly 1 billion people globally.
• Although it’s created in our bodies after exposure to sunlight, most people’s main source of Vitamin D is food – specifically, fish and dairy products.
• Tomato leaves naturally contain one of the building blocks of vitamin D, called 7-DHC; the researchers used the Crispr gene-editing tool to tweak the plant's genome so that 7-DHC accumulates in the tomato’s fruit as well.
• Exposing the gene-edited fruit (☝️ left) to UV light for an hour created tomatoes that each contained 20% of the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin D, equivalent to two medium-sized eggs or 28 grams of tuna.

👀 Looking ahead... The scientists are currently evaluating whether sunshine, instead of UV light, can effectively repeat the same process, after the UK government earlier this year granted them permission to grow the tomatoes in open-air fields.