Metabolic engineering of potato tuber carotenoids through tuber-specific silencing of lycopene epsilon cyclase.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Potato is a major staple food, and modification of its provitamin content is a possible means for alleviating nutritional deficiencies. beta-carotene is the main dietary precursor of vitamin A. Potato tubers contain low levels of carotenoids, composed mainly of the xanthophylls lutein, antheraxanthin, violaxanthin, and of xanthophyll esters. None of these carotenoids have provitamin A activity.

Results

We silenced the first dedicated step in the beta-epsilon- branch of carotenoid biosynthesis, lycopene epsilon cyclase (LCY-e), by introducing, via Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, an antisense fragment of this gene under the control of the patatin promoter. Real Time measurements confirmed the tuber-specific silencing of Lcy-e. Antisense tubers showed signific

SUBMITTER: Diretto G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1570464 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature