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

 

[Moths]

If the potatoes start to smell fishy
Do not eat them.

Id like to think this is a commonsense response to the smell of rotten foodstuffs.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Only retards buy organic anyway.
We already have GM cultivars of potatoes that people buy the shit out of every day.

I buy organic because I don't want to have to fucking rake off a wax layer off my fruits and can deal with blemishes. It's fucking insane to me how shit with more ingredients costs less somehow than shit that's just the default.

 

[Pokemon Conquistador]

It doesn't work on the heavy-hitting stuff like cyanide and ricin.

Actually, you can build up a slight immunity to ricin if you inject small amounts of it. It was a plot point in one of Agatha Christie's mystery stories: The House of Lurking Death". Some Soviet defectors also survived poisoning by ricin because it was injected haphazardly and they were exposed to just enough to form an immunity to it.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

I buy organic because I don't want to have to fucking rake off a wax layer off my fruits and can deal with blemishes. It's fucking insane to me how shit with more ingredients costs less somehow than shit that's just the default.

... you are aware fruit waxing is done in the organic industry too, right?

 

[The Lawgiver]

... you are aware fruit waxing is done in the organic industry too, right?

None of the organic apples I've eaten have had any wax unless they wax them on the fucking trees and the shit on them somehow gets through the wax. i think I can tell when an apple has a fucking layer of thick glossy shit on it.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

None of the organic apples I've eaten have had any wax unless they wax them on the fucking trees and the shit on them somehow gets through the wax.

Well given that fruits naturally form a layer of wax, yes. Whatever "shit" you are seeing is fully capable of eroding its way through a wax layer.

i think I can tell when an apple has a fucking layer of thick glossy shit on it.

You evidently cannot. Even fruits sold in farmer's markets are typically waxed with varying degrees of gloss evident. Granted, the list of waxes allowed to be used in the organic industry is smaller than what's allowed to be used in conventional produce.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Well given that fruits naturally form a layer of wax,

Not the same kind of wax. I'm talking specifically the non natural stuff. This should have been clear from the getgo.

You evidently cannot. Even fruits sold in farmer's markets are typically waxed with varying degrees of gloss evident. Granted, the list of waxes allowed to be used in the organic industry is smaller than what's allowed to be used in conventional produce.

The ones at the grocery stores by me have no wax on them and on a bad day are fucking gross looking. There used to be a pretty big orchard in my area despite it not being rural, I should probably check if it's still there sometime cause they sold that shit fresh from the fucking trees there and they had a pretty good variety of shit. Haven't been there in like at least a decade i think.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

I'm talking specifically the non natural stuff

Most waxes used by any company are "non-natural." Honestly just look up "USDA organic fruit wax" and you'll find a million vendors selling the stuff.
Not that it's even relevant to your argument since the whole reason I mentioned the natural wax was because you said this:

unless they wax them on the fucking trees and the shit on them somehow gets through the wax

The signs of waxing are not what you think they are.

There used to be a pretty big orchard in my area despite it not being rural

I used to live within walking distance from an organic apple orchard. They'd sell me their non-shelf-quality shit for dirt cheap to make cider. Less than half the price of anything you'd find in a store was the asking price since this is the shit they would otherwise sell to companies that made apple sauce or whatever and buy these same apples for even less than that.
If your organic apples looked "gross" and they charged you more for them, you got ripped off. I hate to break it to you.

 

[Local FloRida-man]

This is no different that the many centuries of selective breeding that's been done to give us the mutants we already eat. The only difference is this is faster and more reliable.

I always see this quote brought up to justify whatever molestation routine they're doing to our food and it frankly baffles me. People trust the selective breeding method BECAUSE we've been doing it for centuries and it has a proven track record. Gene splicing is relatively new and people are justified in being skeptical until it too has centuries worth of data proving it isn't turning people gay or muslim.

Besides, you should ALWAYS be aggressively skeptical of the labcoats who meddle with your food. You should never trust them. You should hate them the way you'd hate a plumber or dentist who wants to do something "unorthodox" or "groundbreaking". The risks don't outway the benefits to think otherwise.

 

[The Lawgiver]

If your organic apples looked "gross" and they charged you more for them, you got ripped off. I hate to break it to you.

If you read my post the ones that looked like that weren't the ones from there but scattershot grocery stores.

I always see this quote brought up to justify whatever molestation routine they're doing to our food and it frankly baffles me. People trust the selective breeding method BECAUSE we've been doing it for centuries and it has a proven track record. Gene splicing is relatively new and people are justified in being skeptical until it too has centuries worth of data proving it isn't turning people gay or muslim.

Besides, you should ALWAYS be aggressively skeptical of the labcoats who meddle with your food. You should never trust them. You should hate them the way you'd hate a plumber or dentist who wants to do something "unorthodox" or "groundbreaking". The risks don't outway the benefits to think otherwise.

I'm less skeptical of the meddling itself and more hateful of the patent trolling and the using it as an excuse to do shit making stuff worse in general. Still yeah you obviously should be cautious when doing gene shit in general and there's sometimes unexpected consequences like allergic reactions from people not normally allergic to the ingredients. Got that from some store bought snack pretzels once a few years back and have been kinda skeevy around GMO bioengineering shit since. It becoming weirdly impossible to avoid post corona lockdowns got me basically playing russian roulette at if some shit has whatever branded GMO ingredient caused my mouth to fucking start getting irritated by fucking PRETZELS of all things. Haven't run into another instance yet thank god.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

If you read my post the ones that looked like that weren't the ones from there but scattershot grocery stores.

Right. And I'm saying you got ripped off either way.

I'm less skeptical of the meddling itself and more hateful of the patent trolling and the using it as an excuse to do shit making stuff worse in general

The people growing the plants aren't the same people who own the patents. Literally never.
In order for any GMO crop to be permitted in the USA, they must prove that there is no meaningful difference in nutritional content and no increase in known human toxins (either that or they must undergo clinical trials but literally no GMO crop in the US has gone this route so it's a moot point).
If you had an allergic reaction to eating pretzels, it's more likely you were eating something else that caused it than it having fuckall to do with it being GMO.

 

[Otterly]

You know this will be used to feed the plebs multi year old potatoes. They only want to remove it because turning green limits storage . This is no t to protect your health it’s to make them able to feed you years old slop

 

[The Lawgiver]

You know this will be used to feed the plebs multi year old potatoes. They only want to remove it because turning green limits storage . This is no t to protect your health it’s to make them able to feed you years old slop

it's gonna be hilarious when it backfires and shit goes bad faster.

If you had an allergic reaction to eating pretzels, it's more likely you were eating something else that caused it than it having fuckall to do with it being GMO.

The ingredients were literally the exact same as other pretzels and I'm not allergic to anything. It was a freak one time thing as I said. Do not try gaslighting me over fucking pretzels of all things holy fucking shit lmao.

 

[kcbbq]

You know this will be used to feed the plebs multi year old potatoes. They only want to remove it because turning green limits storage . This is no t to protect your health it’s to make them able to feed you years old slop

Old potatoes are no more poisonous than fresh ones.

If you're concerned about the glycoalkaloids in them do what the Olmecs (or they might have become Incas by then, not exactly sure of the timeline) learned from the animals that ate the wild ones which were so toxic eating them will kill you - eat dirt before eating them. They did eventually learn that it works best cooking them and then putting the potatoes into a slurry of clay and water. That way the toxins bind tightly with the dirt particles before you eat them and the potatoes won't taste bitter. You can't digest the dirt, so the poison just passes right through you out the other end.

It should work for most nightshade family glycoalkiloid toxins but you'd have to be retarded or desperate to try, I guess.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

It was a freak one time thing as I said

And you immediately decided it was the GMO pretzels that did it?

 

[The Lawgiver]

And you immediately decided it was the GMO pretzels that did it?

It never happened before or after that time and the only major difference from other ingredients labels by other companies was "contains a bioengineered food ingredient". It was less immediate and more me being confused what the fuck was in the pretzels and then finding out there's rare/slim chances of allergic reactions with gmo shit after looking up why the fuck pretzels were causing my mouth to swell up and feel hot for seemingly no fucking reason.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

It never happened before or after that time and the only major difference from other ingredients labels by other companies was "contains a bioengineered food ingredient". It was less immediate and more me being confused what the fuck was in the pretzels and then finding out there's rare/slim chances of allergic reactions with gmo shit after looking up why the fuck pretzels were causing my mouth to swell up and feel hot for seemingly no fucking reason.

There are literally zero known instances of commercially available GMO's triggering allergies in anyone who wasn't already allergic to the natural product.
If you really can trace the reaction you had to the pretzels you were eating (which itself would be rather bizarre for the reaction to be that immediate), you are such an extraordinary edge case where your condition does not exist in any medical literature.