NEW ATLAS - The evolutionary ladder is meant to be climbed one rung at a time with an organism shedding some traits and gaining others on the way up. However, in a very surprising twist, some tomatoes on the Galapagos islands are inching back down the ladder.
When they found the backwards-reaching plants, researchers from the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside), were examining crops on the Galapagos islands in an effort to understand the role alkaloids have in their structure. Crops belonging to the nightshade family like potatoes, eggplants, and tomatoes produce these bitter-tasting molecules to help ward off predation by fungi, insects, and other animals. Too many alkaloids, though, can make the plant toxic to humans.
“Our group has been working hard to characterize the steps involved in alkaloid synthesis, so that we can try and control it,” said Adam Jozwiak, a molecular biochemist at UC Riverside and lead author of the study.