In December 2004, plant scientist Cathie Martin went to the greenhouse to check on her tomatoes. The tiny fruits, about the size of gumdrops, were still green. These miniature tomatoes, a variety widely used in research labs, normally become red upon ripening. But when Martin came back after Christmas, they were starting to turn purple—just as she’d hoped.
Martin and her colleagues at the John Innes Centre in the UK were aiming to make a tomato high in anthocyanin, an antioxidant-rich pigment found in blackberries and blueberries. The team engineered the jewel tone by adding two genes from the snapdragon flower, which act like a switch to turn on the
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