Folate fortification of rice by metabolic engineering.

Storozhenko, Sergei; De Brouwer, Veerle; Volckaert, Maarten; Navarrete, Oscar; Blancquaert, Dieter; Zhang, Guo-Fang; Lambert, Willy; Van Der Straeten, Dominique · Nat Biotechnol · 2007

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Rice, the world's major staple crop, is a poor source of essential micronutrients, including folates (vitamin B9). We report folate biofortification of rice seeds achieved by overexpressing two Arabidopsis thaliana genes of the pterin and para-aminobenzoate branches of the folate biosynthetic pathway from a single locus. We obtained a maximal enhancement as high as 100 times above wild type, with 100 g of polished raw grains containing up to four times the adult daily folate requirement.

Medical subject headings