Summer food science

This is a story about the biochemistry of some of the foods that make summer delicious--most of which are fruits and vegetables. For those of you bound for a summertime holiday weekend, we dug into recent research into the yummy foods you might serve at a socially distant picnic.

Fruits and veggies in general

It’s in the bag: The plant hormone ethylene is key to fruit ripening. You’ve probably heard that you can make fruit ripen faster by placing it in a paper bag, raising the concentration of ethylene. This review in the Journal of Biological Chemistry covers what we know about how cells sense and respond to the hormone and how it might be harnessed for agriculture.

Oh, I see! No discussion of the biochemistry of fruits and vegetables would be complete without a nod to the fluorescent protein family named for produce that includes mCherry, tdTomato, and mOrange! Click through for a look at just a few of the many ways these fluorescent proteins are used to understand biochemistry. 

Strawberries

How Fra a proteins bring the FLA(vor): Were it not for Fra a proteins, strawberries would not synthesize the flavonoids that give them their flavor and characteristic hues, from the vibrant reds on grocer’s shelves to the yellows and oranges found only at farmer’s markers or in labs. In this paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers investigated how Fra proteins bind to natural flavonoids to determine how they regulate their activity. They found that the proteins control flavonoid biosynthesis through binding to metabolic intermediates.

AsESing the defensive secrets of a strawberry fungus: Anthracnose, a type of fungal rot, can devastate strawberry yields. By ramping up the plant’s defensive activity, however, scientists may be able to induce broad resistance against a range of fungal pathogens in the bright berries. In this paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers in Argentina purified and characterized a pathogen protein called AsES, which elicits a defensive immune response in the berries. Their findings may contribute to developing disease biocontrol strategies that use strawberries’ innate immunity.

Use a straw: Perhaps you like your strawberries in smoothie form? In this study in the Journal of Lipid Research, by researchers at the Mayo Clinic, participants consumed almost three-quarters of their daily calories in strawberry smoothie form. Mmmmm. 

High-stakes structure: Tomatoes, like many other plants, use photoreceptors called phytochromes to sense far-red light and respond to temperature. In a structural biophysics article in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers reported the crystal structure of an enzyme that converts a precursor molecule used for photosynthesis into phytochrome pigments.

Hardy heirloom: How do tomato seedlings survive an early-season cold snap? It’s a trick question; a gardener could tell you that most don’t. But among strains that can tolerate some cold, it’s thanks to major changes to signaling. This Molecular & Cellular Proteomics article compared the cold-responsive phosphoproteome in an heirloom varietal called the greengage tomato to more wimpy strains to understand what makes the greengage so hardy. 

Sweet(s)

And sweat: The insulin-responsive glucose transporter type 4 (GLUT4) protein was discovered in 1988. This Journal of Biological Chemistry review covers three decades of research made possible by the discovery, which clarified how insulin and exercise regulate glucose transport into muscle and fat cells.  

Sip it for science: Milkshakes are a favorite research tool over at the Journal of Lipid Research. Here’s just one of the many metabolism studies that introduced dietary fat with a milkshake in order to determine how genetic variation affects people’s metabolism.