A recurrent theme of the anti-GM organic lobby is that we don’t need GM because organic will do the job as well if not better with more vitamins, more anti-oxidants and more minerals (see http://www.cropgen.org/article_130.html and http://www.cropgen.org/article_148.html).

No longer. The tables now are beginning to turn with GM crops being developed showing exactly those properties. Just announced is a GM tomato with improved antioxidant activity and zinc content.

Metallothioneins are metal binding-proteins present in plants, animals and microbes. By capturing free radicals, they help the of detoxification of heavy metals and the control of oxidative stress. Foods with high levels of metallothioneins serve as functional foods.

Workers at the University of Beijing have introduced into tomatoes the mt-1 gene, which codes for the mouse metallothionein protein-1. In that way they were able to generate GM tomatoes with increased zinc content and anti-oxidant activity. They concluded that transgenic metallothionein tomatoes may potentially be used as an antioxidant and for zinc supplementation.

So we don’t need organic: we’ve got GM!

Source:

Jiping Sheng, Kailang Liu, Bei Fan, Yan Yuan, Lin Shen and Binggen Ru (26.10.07). Improving zinc content and antioxidant activity in transgenic tomato plants with expression of mouse metallothionein-i by mt-i gene. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/jafcau/asap/abs/jf0709707.html)

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