Science Re-engineering Potatoes To Remove Their All-Natural Toxins

Hackaday Article

Family Solanum (nightshade) is generally associated with toxins, and for good reasons, as most of the plants in this family are poisonous. This includes some of everyone’s favorite staple vegetables: potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant, with especially potatoes responsible for many poisonings each year. In the case of harvested potatoes, the chemical responsible (steroidal glycoalkaloids, or SGA) is produced when the potato begins to sprout. Now a team of researchers at the University of California have found a way to silence the production of the responsible protein: GAME15.

The research was published in Science, following earlier research by the Max Planck Institute. The researchers deleted the gene responsible for GAME15 in Solanum nigrum (black nightshade) to confirm that the thus modified plants produced no SGA. In the case of black nightshade there is not a real need to modify them as – like with tomatoes – the very tasty black berries they produce are free of SGA, and you should not eat the SGA-filled and very bitter green berries anyway, but it makes for a good test subject.

Ultimately the main benefits of this research appear to be in enriching our general understanding of these self-toxicity mechanisms of plants, and in making safer potatoes that can be stored without worries about them suddenly becoming toxic to eat.

Top image: Different potato varieties. (Credit: Scott Bauer, USDA ARS)

Mmm, no more deadly potatoes. WHAT HAS SCIENCE WROUGHT

 

[John Badman]

I prefer my potatoes natural and not fucked with thank you. I won’t eat the goypotatoes

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

The poison adds to the taste, bugman

 

[Wayfaring_$tranger]

All this because idiots can't eat potatoes in a timely fashion and eat them when they turn green

 

[Schwarzwald]

Excited to keep weakening our immune systems to the point where a novel disease wipes out half of humanity some day because we can't handle the common cold.

Maybe nature has those "all-natural toxins" for a reason?

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Now a team of researchers at the University of California

No comment required.

 

[$5.3 Million Dollars]

That still doesn't remedy the greater worry of botulism in them.

 

[TheRedChair]

Jesus Fucking Christ. Fucking Generation Fail. As long as the potato does not TURN GREEN you are safe. I mean how many thousands of years people been eating this tubular crop.

This is the bullshit I see on a daily basis. Incredibly fucking dumb people thinking they are the Bestest Evarrrr.

It's no fun anymore taking their lunch money away from them.

That still doesn't remedy the greater worry of botulism in them.

Well this is again DARWIN IN ACTION.

You bake your potato without using tin foil.
You boil your potato until you see the peel begin to rip.

Again... thousands of years of people eating this tubular. I've never gotten sick eating potatoes and I don't think I ever will.

 

[Optavia Sales Rep]

Bro, the SGAs in 'tatters will only give you gas, the shits, or an upset tummy.
Maybe harvest and store your potatoes correctly so they don't sprout?
No, no. Let's genetically modify them instead and kickstart the next potato blight.

 

[BulkForceFive]

No comment required.

I honestly expected Trinity College Dublin, Professors Paddy O'Donahue and Moira MacOieghalgheoghlg of the Spud Study Department.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

I'm all for it. We already do something similar to prevent acrylamide production in fried potatoes. It's called the "innate potato" and it's been around for years.

Excited to keep weakening our immune systems to the point where a novel disease wipes out half of humanity some day because we can't handle the common cold.

Maybe nature has those "all-natural toxins" for a reason?

Poison doesn't strengthen your immune system. That's not how your immune system works.
"Nature" put those toxins there for the explicit purpose of poisoning anything that tries to eat it.

 

[Chaos Theorist]

I honestly expected Trinity College Dublin, Professors Paddy O'Donahue and Moira MacOieghalgheoghlg of the Spud Study Department.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Park
The bogtrotters love Potatoes they build theme parks around it

 

[Kent Allard]

I'm all for it. We already do something similar to prevent acrylamide production in fried potatoes. It's called the "innate potato" and it's been around for years.


Poison doesn't strengthen your immune system. That's not how your immune system works.
"Nature" put those toxins there for the explicit purpose of poisoning anything that tries to eat it.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that sprang to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

 

[TowinKarz]

Jesus Fucking Christ. Fucking Generation Fail. As long as the potato does not TURN GREEN you are safe.

You used to learn pretty quick to avoid the potato chips with the sliver of green on em' , or just pass them to the other person on the couch with you and hope they don't' notice.... it's good for a laugh.

Poison doesn't strengthen your immune system. That's not how your immune system works.
"Nature" put those toxins there for the explicit purpose of poisoning anything that tries to eat it.

There's anecdotal evidence you can build your tolerance to low-grade poisons and toxins, like how you can get acclimated to high altitudes or cold temperatures? But it only works on stuff that at worst makes you feel bad and vomit a little. It doesn't work on the heavy-hitting stuff like cyanide and ricin.

But you're right, it's not an immune system response. It's a different body system and it depends a LOT on your genetics and metabolic rate if it'll actually work at all.

 

[Bucephalus]

Excited to keep weakening our immune systems to the point where a novel disease wipes out half of humanity some day because we can't handle the common cold.

Maybe nature has those "all-natural toxins" for a reason?

You can't build up an immunity to solanine (the SGA found in potatoes and the rest of the nightshade family) from eating potatoes. Yes, you can build up a tolerance to some substances, but that's not the same thing as an immunity, and a tolerance isn't inherently good either.

Alcohol is the example most people are familiar with: when someone drinks enough alcohol over a long enough period of time to build up a tolerance to it, they are essentially conditioning their immune system to stop responding to the presence of alcohol in their body. This alleviates some of the symptoms of intoxication, namely the ones caused by immune response - they'll stop vomiting because the immune system is no longer trying to remove it from the GI tract, or they'll stop experiencing inflammation because there is no longer an immune response to provoke it, et cetera. BUT no matter how much of a tolerance they have, it's still going to tank their reaction time (because that's alcohol interfering with the brain's communication pathways), it's still going to damage their liver (because that's their liver cells dying from processing alcohol), because those are caused by alcohol's interactions with the rest of the body. Being an alcoholic doesn't strengthen your immune system - it just makes it really shitty at doing its job, which is responding to toxins and telling you to PULL UP.

So let's say you try to build up a tolerance to solanine by continually ingesting it. The main symptoms caused by the immune response to solanine poisoning are inflammation of the stomach lining, fever, and vomiting, so those might reduce with continual exposure... which is not a good thing. Those symptoms are your body saying to PULL UP and take it easy on the spuds. The symptoms you really want to worry about are the ones that aren't caused by the immune response, like delirium, hypothermia, shock, paralysis, and death. The dosage where those symptoms start to present themselves is going to remain the same regardless of how much of a "tolerance" to solanine you have, because they're caused by solanine interacting with the rest of your body. And because your immune system can no longer warn you that you need to PULL UP, you're much more likely to ingest a lethal dose of solanine than if you hadn't built up a tolerance in the first place.

Again, you're not strengthening your immune system by ingesting non-lethal doses of poison. You're making it retarded.

 

[Bland Crumbs]

Leave the potatoes alone.

 

[genericlurker777]

This is honestly hugely useful. The one weakness of Potatoes as a staple is them turning into a poison ball after a week. This now means they're shelf stable until they get mold on them.

 

[Haramburger]

Mutatoes.

No strong feelings one way or another. I liked the overgrown potato science fair segment of Portal 2.

 

[Vecr]

Again, you're not strengthening your immune system by ingesting non-lethal doses of poison. You're making it retarded.

There is debate about this. I don't suggest it, but for some toxins it might be theoretically possible to get an immune response. Several toxins can be made safer with intermediate home chemistry though, letting you up the dose enough to get real, useful immunity. Beware Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE), don't YOLO something unless you're willing to test in small animals.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

this makes sense with the millions of deaths from potato mishaps each year