Most vitamin D supplements are sourced from sheep’s wool, and others sourced from lichen are more expensive. Gene-edited tomatoes could provide an alternative option for vegans
Biologists have created gene-edited tomatoes that offer a new plant-based source of vitamin D, as the UK government prepares to change the law to allow such “precision-bred” food to be sold in supermarkets., which about a billion people globally don’t get enough of, particularly in sun-starved northern latitudes. The engineered fruit also offers a new vegan alternative to typical vitamin D supplements.
“We altered a very small fragment of a part of this gene,” saysat the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, who led the research. “Comparing with the non-edited tomato plants, we didn’t see any effect on growth, development or yield in our edited plant. It just looked like a normal tomato fruit.”, also at the John Innes Centre, says that because of the gene’s structure, it would have been “very difficult” to use traditional plant breeding to arrive at a natural mutation that knocked out the enzyme.