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| Vol. 24, No. 7 |
| April 15, 2002 |
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Discovery Could Lead to Calcium-Fortified Vegetables by LORI WILLIAMS Baylor College of Medicine A calcium-rich diet could be as easy as eating a salad for consumers in the future. Plant scientists have found a tiny slice of protein that could one day lead to the production of vegetables that are "naturally fortified" with calcium. In earlier studies, scientists working with Dr. Kendal Hirschi, a plant physiologist at the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine, discovered that turning "on" the production of a protein called CAX1 in the cells of a tiny weed known as Arabidopsis thaliana increased the calcium content of the plant’s leaf and root cells by 30 to 100 percent. Now, Dr. Hirschi’s team has identified a tiny slice of CAX1, a string of nine amino acids responsible for the protein’s calcium-boosting prowess, and successfully transferred the slice to similar proteins, called transporters. The team’s findings were recently reported in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. "We knew we had found the key slice of CAX1 because removing it rendered the protein non-functional, while inserting it into another transporter that "looked like" CAX1 turned that protein into one that also functioned like CAX1," said Dr. Hirschi, also an assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor. CAX1 is known as a calcium transporter because it pulls calcium out of cellular fluids and stashes it in cell storage structures called vacuoles. Dr. Hirschi’s team hopes to use CAX1 and other calcium transporters to move more calcium into "storage" inside cells, which could set off a physiological chain reaction that might ultimately cause plants to pull more calcium out of the soil and improve their overall calcium content. "Our success with this tiny weed is encouraging, but the real test will be whether this new knowledge will translate into improving the calcium content of popular foods like potatoes and tomatoes," he said.
©2006 Texas Medical Center E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/04_15_02/page_11.html |