Arctic apple slices (bottom) compared to traditional apple slices. (Credit: Okanagan Specialty Fruits) It's a small victory for fruit-salad enthusiasts: The U.S. Department of Agriculture last week approved genetically modified apples that don’t brown when exposed to air. The approval allows trees bearing this type of fruit, called Arctic apples, to be planted on U.S. soil and, once the FDA agrees, the produce could be sold in stores within a few years.
Unlike some genetically modified foods that are manipulated by adding genes, scientists created the Arctic apple by turned off the gene that controls the browning process. Apples' color change, technically called “enzymatic browning,” occurs when oxygen reacts with an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase. Arctic apple scientists use a technique called gene silencing to turn off their apples’ polyphenol oxidase expression, which causes them to produce the chemical in amounts too small to cause browning. You can see that ...
