In 2021, a Japanese university start-up company, Sanatech Seed, launched the world's first direct consumption genome-edited tomato with "enhanced nutritional benefits".
The novel product was carefully chosen to minimise consumer suspicion: a popular strain of tomato was used and a nutrient that people are "already used to buying in other products" which have naturally high levels.
Sanatech Seed's president explained "This tomato represents an easy and realistic way in which consumers can improve their daily diet" ... "we felt it was important to introduce (consumers) to the technology in a way that was already familiar to them".
This cosily familiar nutrient which Sanatech Seed wants you to want more of is γ-aminobutyric acid (a.k.a. 'GABA').
If you don't recall ever putting GABA on your shopping list, that's because the "other products" referred to are things like cabbage, broccoli, spinach, soya, mushroom and peas.
No, it's not clear to us either why consumers should make any connection between these mundane purchasing choices and a GM tomato.
Chemically, GABA is a free amino-acid (i.e. it's not one which is used by cells to build proteins) and has a role in a wide variety of biochemical processes in all forms of life.
In plants, GABA is involved in multiple physiological responses and seems to have a balancing, stabilising and protective function.
In the fruit of the tomato, the GABA content is high when the seeds inside are immature but declines rapidly during ripening. At the same time, GABA's precursor and catabolic product, glutamate, increases. It's been suggested that this biochemical shift has evolved to produce better tasting ripe fruit which will attract predators and so aid seed dispersal. The new GM tomatoes have had a gene edited out to prevent GABA's natural decline
No one's mentioned whether the GM version of the popular strain of tomato has retained its popular taste despite this impaired GABA depletion.
In humans, GABA is generated by brain cells and has the effect of damping down nerve activity. It has a reputation for lowering blood pressure and reducing anxiety when taken as a pure supplement or fermented liquid. However, studies undertaken so far have involved researchers with a commercial interest in the outcome, and none has involved fresh wholefoods. One researcher noted that GABA supplements which seemed to reduce stress indicators in human trials were administered at high dosages: "... one would have to eat 2.34 kg of uncooked spinach in order to consume a similar amount of GABA, and spinach is relatively high in GABA compared to other foods."
GABA isn't an essential element in our diet so you might be wondering by now what "enhanced nutritional benefit" or diet improvement a high-GABA tomato could possibly provide.
The hope seems to be that GABA-tomatoes will do what GABA supplements claim to do: lower blood pressure and aid relaxation. Whether GABA from GM tomatoes will be able to penetrate through to the brain cells in sufficient amounts to have any effect is questionable. Indeed, pharmaceutical manufacturers have put a lot of effort into designing unusual chemical analogues of GABA which will easily penetrate into, and affect, the brain (one of these is the 'date rape drug').
In Japan, developers of gene-edited foods are only "requested" to "engage" with regulators before taking their novel products to market: no environmental or health impact assessment is required (even if it's a fresh GM food designed to affect brain function).
In the first instance, the strategy is to make five GABA tomato seedlings available, free of charge, to home growers.
The next phase of the venture is mass seed generation so that commercial tomato growers can be supplied with seed for production at scale. GABA tomatoes will then be processed into puree presumably with concentrated GABA (plus presumably concentrated quantities of any other unusual substance that happens to have formed in them).
Tomatoes are members of the nightshade family of plants. Have a look at our comment in GM TOY TOMATOES - January 2022: the potential disruption caused by gene-editing is no different from the disruption caused by gene insertion.
Needless to say these tomatoes are planned to be the first of many genome-edited tomatoes with which Sanatech Seed "hope to make people healthy".
GABA tomatoes might also make people poor: their price-tag is reportedly more than double what you would pay for organic tomatoes.
The final products will be sold with a catchy tree-like logo around which the consumer is told:
We Create Healthy Veggie and Fruit for you
[HEALTHY TREE LOGO]
This product is Gene Edited Crop
(This product is brought you by Gene Editing)
(Sic.)
Sanatech Seed is keen to pursue new opportunities world-wide. Its president said "We are keeping a close eye on the regulatory status of gene-edited crops in other countries, particularly in the UK, which will be an important test case, as the government has more options on how to proceed with its regulatory framework since leaving the European Union."
It sounds like Britain is seen as a sitting duck for any gene-edited food other countries want to profit from.
So, we have a GMO nightshade to be eaten fresh by people of all ages and backgrounds, producing unnatural (for a ripe tomato) amounts of a brain-altering substance known to have analogues which are also brain-altering. No one's checked what unusual substances the GM tomato might produce, especially under environmental stress. No one's checked whether raw high-GABA food is handled by the body in the same way as cooked high-GABA food.
Watch out for magic stress-busting GM tomatoes sometime in the future and make sure the 'test case' is a failure. Bear in mind that no one would dare label them 'gene-edited' in the UK market, because they might as well put a skull and crossbones on them.
SOURCES:
Chemically, GABA is a free amino-acid (i.e. it's not one which is used by cells to build proteins) and has a role in a wide variety of biochemical processes in all forms of life.
In plants, GABA is involved in multiple physiological responses and seems to have a balancing, stabilising and protective function.
In the fruit of the tomato, the GABA content is high when the seeds inside are immature but declines rapidly during ripening. At the same time, GABA's precursor and catabolic product, glutamate, increases. It's been suggested that this biochemical shift has evolved to produce better tasting ripe fruit which will attract predators and so aid seed dispersal. The new GM tomatoes have had a gene edited out to prevent GABA's natural decline
No one's mentioned whether the GM version of the popular strain of tomato has retained its popular taste despite this impaired GABA depletion.
In humans, GABA is generated by brain cells and has the effect of damping down nerve activity. It has a reputation for lowering blood pressure and reducing anxiety when taken as a pure supplement or fermented liquid. However, studies undertaken so far have involved researchers with a commercial interest in the outcome, and none has involved fresh wholefoods. One researcher noted that GABA supplements which seemed to reduce stress indicators in human trials were administered at high dosages: "... one would have to eat 2.34 kg of uncooked spinach in order to consume a similar amount of GABA, and spinach is relatively high in GABA compared to other foods."
GABA isn't an essential element in our diet so you might be wondering by now what "enhanced nutritional benefit" or diet improvement a high-GABA tomato could possibly provide.
The hope seems to be that GABA-tomatoes will do what GABA supplements claim to do: lower blood pressure and aid relaxation. Whether GABA from GM tomatoes will be able to penetrate through to the brain cells in sufficient amounts to have any effect is questionable. Indeed, pharmaceutical manufacturers have put a lot of effort into designing unusual chemical analogues of GABA which will easily penetrate into, and affect, the brain (one of these is the 'date rape drug').
In Japan, developers of gene-edited foods are only "requested" to "engage" with regulators before taking their novel products to market: no environmental or health impact assessment is required (even if it's a fresh GM food designed to affect brain function).
In the first instance, the strategy is to make five GABA tomato seedlings available, free of charge, to home growers.
The next phase of the venture is mass seed generation so that commercial tomato growers can be supplied with seed for production at scale. GABA tomatoes will then be processed into puree presumably with concentrated GABA (plus presumably concentrated quantities of any other unusual substance that happens to have formed in them).
Tomatoes are members of the nightshade family of plants. Have a look at our comment in GM TOY TOMATOES - January 2022: the potential disruption caused by gene-editing is no different from the disruption caused by gene insertion.
Needless to say these tomatoes are planned to be the first of many genome-edited tomatoes with which Sanatech Seed "hope to make people healthy".
GABA tomatoes might also make people poor: their price-tag is reportedly more than double what you would pay for organic tomatoes.
The final products will be sold with a catchy tree-like logo around which the consumer is told:
We Create Healthy Veggie and Fruit for you
[HEALTHY TREE LOGO]
This product is Gene Edited Crop
(This product is brought you by Gene Editing)
(Sic.)
Sanatech Seed is keen to pursue new opportunities world-wide. Its president said "We are keeping a close eye on the regulatory status of gene-edited crops in other countries, particularly in the UK, which will be an important test case, as the government has more options on how to proceed with its regulatory framework since leaving the European Union."
OUR COMMENT
It sounds like Britain is seen as a sitting duck for any gene-edited food other countries want to profit from.
So, we have a GMO nightshade to be eaten fresh by people of all ages and backgrounds, producing unnatural (for a ripe tomato) amounts of a brain-altering substance known to have analogues which are also brain-altering. No one's checked what unusual substances the GM tomato might produce, especially under environmental stress. No one's checked whether raw high-GABA food is handled by the body in the same way as cooked high-GABA food.
Watch out for magic stress-busting GM tomatoes sometime in the future and make sure the 'test case' is a failure. Bear in mind that no one would dare label them 'gene-edited' in the UK market, because they might as well put a skull and crossbones on them.
SOURCES:
·
Laura Maxwell, Sanatach Seed launches world's
first GE tomato, www.fruitnet.com, 16.03.21
·
First Genome Edited Tomato with Increased
GABA In the World, Press Release, Tsukuba
University Office of Public Relations, 11.12.20
·
www.sanatech-seeds.com
·
Japan Starts Sale of Genome-Edited High-GABA
Tomato, ISAAA.org, 22.09.21
·
Evert Boonstra, et al., 2015, Neurotransmitters
as food supplements: the effects of GABA on brain and behaviour, Frontiers
in Psychology
·
UK targeted for experimental gene-edited
tomato, GM Watch 24.03.21#
·
Jill Corleone, A List of Foods with the
Highest GABA, Livestrong.com, 5.08.19
·
Mariko Takayama and Hiroshi Ezura, 2015, How
and why does tomato accumulate a large amount of GABA in the fruit?
Frontiers in Plant Science
·
Satoko Nonaka, et al., 2017, Efficient
increase of γ-aminobutyric acid
(GABA) content in tomato fruits by targeted mutagenesis, Nature Scientific
Reports
·
CRISPR tomatoes, TestBiotech 2021
· Japan's gene-edited tomato another GMO white elephant, GM Watch, 21.09.21
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