{"id":126942,"date":"2021-08-30T07:22:52","date_gmt":"2021-08-30T14:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/scientists-add-human-fat-gene-into-potatoes-to-make-them-grow-huge"},"modified":"2021-08-30T07:22:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-30T14:22:52","slug":"scientists-add-human-fat-gene-into-potatoes-to-make-them-grow-huge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/scientists-add-human-fat-gene-into-potatoes-to-make-them-grow-huge","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Add Human Fat Gene Into Potatoes to Make Them Grow Huge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-add-human-fat-gene-into-potatoes-to-make-them-grow-huge.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A team of scientists found an unusual trick for growing bigger, heartier crops: inserting a human gene related to obesity and fat mass into plants to supersize their harvest.<\/p>\n<p>Augmenting potatoes with the human gene that encodes a fat-regulating protein called FTO, which essentially alters the genetic code to rapidly mass-produce proteins, made otherwise identical potato plants grow crops that were 50 percent larger, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/innovation\/researchers-transfer-human-protein-plants-supersize-them-180978443\/\" class=\"\">Smithsonian Magazine<\/a> <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/innovation\/researchers-transfer-human-protein-plants-supersize-them-180978443\/\" class=\"\">reports<\/a>. By growing more food without taking up more space for agriculture, the scientists say their work could help fight global hunger \u2014 without adding to <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/farming-huge-impact-environment-enter-carbon-trapping\" class=\"\">its climate impact<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt [was] really a bold and bizarre idea,\u201d University of Chicago chemist Chuan He, coauthor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41587-021-00982-9.epdf?sharing_token=rzHV2F2T882Bv5hm2gA06tRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PXHvbioyMeGZz7c9A7LExgK3EnpyufmckojgLBv3xdM5T4hZWzAwTQWJg2fnnwa9YDLIF1XkG6T5ECP8EaUN-HDx18qGG0g6kAs-BJgf8eqdiaJeaHXncaqxcN8Ycet0RYbzQPjcnr93JQL4qvdPADYH00g_PdJXig8h7bRoJ_q2lp4G-TiOVuh8xya7Fj3Tc%3D&tracking_referrer=www.smithsonianmag.com\" class=\"\">of a paper<\/a> published in <em>Nature Biotechnology,<\/em> told <em>Smithsonian<\/em>. \u201cTo be honest, we were probably expecting some catastrophic effects.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of scientists found an unusual trick for growing bigger, heartier crops: inserting a human gene related to obesity and fat mass into plants to supersize their harvest. Augmenting potatoes with the human gene that encodes a fat-regulating protein called FTO, which essentially alters the genetic code to rapidly mass-produce proteins, made otherwise identical [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1506,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-food","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}