Those genetic engineers have been at it again and produced a tomato that expresses a peptide (6F) that mimics good cholesterol.
The team dried the tomatoes to a powder and fed it to mice along with a representative „western diet“. As a control, they constructed a GM tomato that carried an empty vector instead of the peptide.
They found that after 13 weeks the mice fed the peptide producing tomato had lower levels of total cholesterol and triglycerides, higher levels of HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol) and decreased small intestine LPA, high levels of which can increase incidence of heart disease.