Anticholesterol GM tomatoes
Transgenic tomatoes will protect against atherosclerosis
Kirill Stasevich, CompulentaWhat happens when we eat fatty foods?
Cholesterol, fats-triglycerides, fatty acids and other lipids enter the small intestine, where they are packaged for shipment to the liver. The liver still successfully copes with the flow of fat, but if there is too much of it, it will lead to an increase in the level of low-density lipoproteins (also called "bad cholesterol"), a decrease in the content of high-density lipoproteins ("good cholesterol") and the appearance of sluggish inflammation. And where there is inflammation, there is not far to diabetes, vascular problems, etc.
This picture, however, is far from complete: it definitely underestimates the role of the small intestine. Researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles (USA) found out that the fat-processing work of the small intestine is influenced by lysophosphatides, which also belong to lipids, but are usually present in such small amounts that they were not paid attention to.
Firstly, it turned out that mice fed fatty foods (different fats, including cholesterol, accounted for 21%) had twice the level of lysophosphatides in the small intestine compared to animals that ate food with 4% fat. Secondly, lysophosphatides accumulated in the intestine even if they were simply added to normal, low-fat food (and they were added in a ratio of one to a million by weight).
And, finally, the most important thing: with an increase in the level of lysophosphatides in the cells of the small intestine, the activity of some genes changed, and after that the ratio of "bad" and "good" cholesterol changed, and besides, the concentration of inflammatory markers in the blood also increased. All this could be observed even when the animals ate ordinary food, without excess cholesterol and saturated fats. It was enough just to add lysophosphatides to a low-fat feed.
All this has led researchers to believe that some important events, fraught with atherosclerosis and a disorder of fat metabolism, can occur in the small intestine itself and even before fats are sent to the liver. And that lysophosphatides play an important role in this.
But is it possible to somehow prevent such an unpleasant effect of these fats on the small intestine and metabolism? Alan Fogelman and his colleagues found an ingenious way: they proposed to suppress the effect of lysophosphatides with... transgenic tomatoes.
A gene encoding peptide 6F was inserted into tomatoes, which mimics the work of the ApoA-1 protein, which is part of the "good" high-density lipoproteins. If mice receiving an increased dose of lysophosophatides were fed a powder made from tomatoes with 6F-peptide, their "bad" cholesterol did not increase, lysophosphatides did not accumulate in the intestine, inflammation did not develop. At the same time, the tomato additive was only 2.2% of the weight eaten. And, importantly, the same effect of 6F-tomatoes was in mice that ate saturated fat food without a special lysophosphatide supplement.
As the authors write in the Journal of Lipid Research (Navab et al., Transgenic 6F tomatoes act on the small intestine to prevent systemic inflammation and dyslipidemia caused by Western diet and internally derived lysophosphatidic acid), 6F somehow reduced the content of lysophosphatides in the small intestine and thereby prevented changes in genetic activity, which could cause a disorder of lipid metabolism. In the future, researchers are going to find out more precisely how lysophosphatides and genes of small intestine cells are connected.
It is worth admitting that the idea of protecting oneself with the help of transgenic food from obesity, atherosclerosis and other metabolic disorders following improper nutrition is very impressive – if only the word "transgenic" does not once again demonstrate its mystical power and discredit such works in the eyes of a very worried public for science.
Prepared based on the materials of the University of California, Los Angeles –
Tomato therapy: Engineered veggies target intestinal lipids, improve cholesterol.
A picture from a previous post on the same topic:
UCLA researchers create tomatoes that mimic actions of good cholesterol – VM.Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru