NCIE
NCIE
Scientists have discovered how carrots got their orange hue
Scientists have decoded and compared the DNA structure of more than 600 types of carrot, which helped them prove that they were domesticated in AD. In the 9th-10th centuries in Western or Central Asia. They also identified mutations in three genes that cause carrots to accumulate vitamin A and turn orange. According to shantnews, the press service of North Carolina University (NCSU) informs about this. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Plants.
“We've essentially reconstructed the entire chronology of how carrots became domesticated and turned orange. It happened after the cross-breeding of white and yellow carrots," NCSU associate professor Massimo Iorizzo said, as quoted by the university's press service.
Iorizzo and his colleagues spent many years studying the carrot genome to identify the genes responsible for the plant's ability to develop disease resistance, as well as for the orange pigments that are precursors to vitamin A. Scientists took the first big step towards obtaining this information in 2016., when they first completely sequenced the yellow carrot genome.
In the years that followed, Iorizzo and his colleagues studied the DNA structure of 630 varieties of lettuce, including wild, yellow, white, orange and purple. Scientists compared small mutations in the genomes of these carrot varieties, which made it possible to reconstruct the domestication history of this plant.
