COSMOS MAGAZINE

Medication-safe grapefruit varieties on the horizon

By Ellen Phiddian

Grapefruit, and some other varieties of citrus fruit, are off the menu for a lot of people using common medications. But a new study might help to develop safe varieties.

Grapefruits, as well as pomelos and bitter oranges, contain compounds that interfere with the action of a number of different drugs prescribed for conditions like cholesterol, high blood pressure, and anxiety.

These medicine-inhibiting compounds are called furanocoumarins. People prescribed these medicines are usually instructed to avoid grapefruits and grapefruit juice.

After examining the genomes of ancestral citrus species, researchers found that a single gene in citrus fruit controlled whether or not the fruit produced furanocoumarins.

The researchers say that a medication-safe grapefruit could be cultivated via either genetic modification, or marker-assisted breeding, to knock out the problematic gene.

cosmosmagazine.com 

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