Comparing Wild Tomatoes To Supermarket Tomatoes For Delicious Genes
Heirloom Tomatoes Wikimedia Commons A complete genomic look at wild and domestic tomatoes might help us combine their strengths for an ultimate tomato. Hot-house tomatoes, like you might find at the supermarket in February, are beautiful, perfect, deep red fruits...with no taste at all. Wild tomatoes and heirlooms are expensive, difficult to grow, travel poorly, prone to disease, and often look flawed...but can taste amazing. Genetic biologists have been trying to combine the strengths of each for some time now, and researchers have just managed to compare the DNA and RNA sequences of domestic and wild tomatoes. Science20 describes it this way: "If the DNA sequence is the list of parts for making a tomato plant, the messenger RNA transcripts are the step-by-step instructions." By looking at the comparison between domestic and wild strains, they can tell which specific genes are active and how they affect the flavor, appearance, lifespan,...