SCIENTISTS have produced plants enriched with vitamin E, a potent antioxidant that can protect against heart disease and cancer.
Vitamin E can be made up of either the tocotrienol or tocopherol molecule group. Food crops such as rice, wheat and barley contain mostly tocotrienols, the more powerful antioxidant form of the vitamin. Teams working in Missouri and Delaware have now identified the crucial enzyme in tocotrienol synthesis.
By extracting genes that help make the vitamin in barley, and inserting them into maize, they could increase levels of tocotrienol six-fold (Nature Biotechnology, DOI:10.1038/nbt853).
