Eating greens alters qenes

摘要

CONSIDER the Brussels sprout: small, unassuming and ostensibly good for you. This is no mere side dish. A landmark study suggests that this dinky member of the cabbage family - along with rice, broccoli and possibly all the plants you eat - changes the behaviour of your genes in ways that are new to science. In what is the strongest evidence yet that the genetic material in food survives digestion and circulates through the body, fragments of plant RNA have been found swimming in the bloodstreams of people and cows. What's more the study by Chen-Yu Zhang of Nanjing University in China and his colleagues shows that some of these plant RNAs muffle gene expression and raise cholesterol levels in mice. The discovery opens up a new way to turn food into medicine: we may be able to design plants that change our genes for the better.