Tomatoes make tubers

摘要

Boosting levels of a hormone in tomato plants (Solarium lycopersicum) causes them to make tubers, like their sibling species the potato (Solanum tuberosum). Yuval Eshed at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, Eliezer Lifschitz at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and their team engineered tomatoes to have high levels of a cytokinin, a type of hormone found in all plants. The tomatoes formed tiny tubers (pictured) at the base of leaves along their stems, where cells divide and levels of hormones fluctuate.