Team:Harvard/flavor

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As flavor is the first sense you associate with food, it is flavor that shapes our attitude and fondness towards different fruits and vegetables. For this reasons, the Team Flavor aspect of the iGarden project is to introduce new tastes and smells into the arabidopsis plant by expression of new proteins and pathways.  In particular, we have two proteins to alter taste, Miraculin and Brazzein, and two pathways to express scent: wintergreen (mint) and valencene (orange/citrus).
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As flavor and scent are the senses directly associated with food, they help to shape one's attitude towards specific fruits and vegetables. If the smell or flavor of an undesirable but healthy food can be altered, perhaps we can create a nutritious food that more people will want to eat! To approach this problem, the Flavor sub-team chose to express novel proteins and pathways in <i>Arabidopsis</i> that would change the plant's taste and smell. Obviously <i>Arabidopsis</i> is not a commonly consumed food, but the project serves as proof that our goals are workable. The team chose to focus on two proteins that alter taste - miraculin and brazzein - and three pathways that alter scent - valencene (orange/citrus), wintergreen (mint) and banana.
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Miraculin is a protein derived from Miracle Berries, and works through binding taste receptors and resulting in ‘sour’ tastes to seem ‘sweet.’  Brazzein is a natural sweetener that is much more potent that sugar or even other natural sweeteners.  Both of the proteins can be directly expressed within the plant.
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The scents of both Wintergreen and Valencene require the derivation of particular molecules from existing chemical compounds already within the plant. For the wintergreen pathway, the desired scent comes from the compound Methyl Salicylate. BioBrick parts from the MIT 2006 iGEM team are used in a two-step process to change Chorismate to Methyl Salicylate, requiring three separate enzymes.
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The orange-citrus smell requires only a single gene, found in Valencia oranges. The gene is extracted from the orange and then directly expressed in the plants in the same manner as Miraculin and Brazzein.
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Latest revision as of 00:10, 27 October 2010



abstract

As flavor and scent are the senses directly associated with food, they help to shape one's attitude towards specific fruits and vegetables. If the smell or flavor of an undesirable but healthy food can be altered, perhaps we can create a nutritious food that more people will want to eat! To approach this problem, the Flavor sub-team chose to express novel proteins and pathways in Arabidopsis that would change the plant's taste and smell. Obviously Arabidopsis is not a commonly consumed food, but the project serves as proof that our goals are workable. The team chose to focus on two proteins that alter taste - miraculin and brazzein - and three pathways that alter scent - valencene (orange/citrus), wintergreen (mint) and banana.

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