Optimisation of tomato fruit carotenoid content for nutritional improvement and industrial exploitation.

大多数水果、花卉和蔬菜的颜色都是由于类胡萝卜素等天然色素的存在。这类特殊的化学分子也是人类饮食的重要组成部分。在体内，它们有一种有益的作用，可以驱散破坏生物结构的活性分子物种。除了膳食来源外，类胡萝卜素也可以利用石化副产品化学合成。类胡萝卜素的化学生产产生的产品用于保健、食品、饲料、化妆品和制药行业。生产过程昂贵，会产生非天然的化合物混合物，并且对环境不利。因此，产生这些化合物和其他化合物的可再生资源是一项重要的挑战，将对社会产生深远的利益。几十年来，通过传统和现代基因干预方法促进植物类胡萝卜素色素的生物合成，一直是生物技术的焦点。然而，随着基因组测序和其他现代技术的出现，很明显，这些化合物的降解是调节组织/器官（如花、水果和种子）水平的重要因素。一种重要的酶可以潜在地作用于类胡萝卜素，将它们转化为来自母体分子的更小的产物。为了进一步确认和确定这种酶的作用，我们将：(i)使用类胡萝卜素含量改变的番茄品种，并将类胡萝卜素水平与其衍生的类伪胡萝卜素进行比较。这将提供有关植物如何平衡其类胡萝卜素含量的信息。（ii）分离/增强酶活性并引入前体以确定潜在的产物。培育和鉴定经过改造以防止类胡萝卜素降解的植物。研究这些植物将使我们能够在农作物中确定类胡萝卜素分解代谢所起的作用。总的来说，这些数据将在未来对消费者、福利服务和行业产生社会和经济影响。

The colour of most fruits, flowers and vegetables is due to the presence of natural pigments such as carotenoids. This specific class of chemical molecules are also essential components of the human diet. In the body, they have a beneficial effect dissipating reactive molecular species that can damage biological structures. In addition to dietary sources, carotenoids are also synthesised chemically using petrochemical by-products. This chemical production of carotenoids generates products that are used in the health, food, feed, cosmetic and pharma industry. The production process is expensive, results in unnatural compound mixtures and has unfavourable environmental credentials. Therefore, generating renewable sources of these compounds, and others, is an important challenge that will have far reaching benefits for society. The increase of carotenoid pigments in plants, through traditional and modern genetic intervention approaches to boost biosynthesis, has been the biotechnological focus for several decades. However, with the advent of genome sequencing and other modern technologies, it has become apparent that the degradation of these compounds is an important factor that acts to regulate levels in tissues/organs such as flowers, fruit and seeds. An important enzyme that can potentially act on carotenoids to convert them to smaller products derived from their parent molecules has been identified. In order to confirm and determine the effects of this enzyme further, we will:(i) Use tomato varieties with altered carotenoid content and determine carotenoid levels compared to their derived apocarotenoids. This will provide information on how the plant balances its carotenoid content.(ii) Isolate/enrich the enzyme activity and introduce precursors to ascertain the potential resulting products.(iii) Generate and characterise plants which have been altered to prevent carotenoid degradation. Studying these plants will allow us, in crop plants, to determine the role played by carotenoid catabolism. Collectively these data will, in the future, have societal and economic impact benefiting the consumer, welfare services and industries.