Inserting an animal gene into the DNA of tomatoes produces a hardier tomato

• Human speech and bird song may have more in common than we know, and the research could lead to new progress for people with genetic speech disorders.
• Researchers have found that inserting an animal gene into tomatoes can produce hardier tomatoes.
• Researchers at the Samuel Roberts Nobel Foundation were able to produce hardier tomatoes by inserting an animal gene into an ornamental variety of tomatoes not usually eaten called micro-toms.
• Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Marilyn Roossinck, Pin Xu and Stephanie Rogers reported that the gene controls a growth mechanism called apoptosis or "programmed cell death."
• She notes that in humans, for example, "if you look at your hand and you see that you have all these fingers on your hand, separated---the reason you have separate fingers is because of programmed cell death during development.
• During development human hands start as paddles, the fingers then form, and the skin between the fingers then dies.
• The modified tomatoes resist a disease called the Cucumber Mosaic Virus, which, along with a parasitic piece of RNA called satellite RNA, takes advantage of the programmed cell death process to kill the tomato plant.
• By inserting an animal gene they were able to stop the RNA from triggering the apoptosis process.
• Roossinck adds the use of the animal gene is important, noting, "we don't know what the proteins in plants normally are that are involved in this process.
• We know that it's similar to the process in animals because it looks the same.