Vitamin B6 is essential in the metabolism of fat and sugars in human body, playing main role in the body's blood, muscles, nerves, skin, etc. Vitamin B6 deficiency can cause loss of appetite, weight loss, vomiting, anemia, arthritis and spastic child, depression and other symptoms, especially common in the African regions where the staple people’s food is cassava. Plant scientists, including Wilhelm Gruissem and Peng Zhang from SCCB made a significant progress to find a way to increase vitamin B6 production in the roots and leaves of the cassava plant by genetic engineering. Transgenic cassava expressing two enzymes, PDX1 and PDX2 that are involved in the synthesis of the vitamin from Arabidopsis produces several-fold higher levels of this important vitamin. Using the improved variety, only 500 g of boiled roots or 50 g of leaves per day is sufficient to meet the daily vitamin B6 requirement. This could prevent vitamin B6 deficiency among people who consume mostly cassava. SCCB is mainly responsible for the field test and agronomic evaluation of the genetically modified cassava in the project and PhD student Qiuxiang Ma conducted the experiment. The achievement was recently published by Correspondence “Increased bioavailable vitamin B6 in field-grown transgenic cassava for dietary sufficiency” in the latest issue of Nature Biotechnology. The program was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and Chinese Cassava Agriculture Research system.

Article link: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v33/n10/full/nbt.3318.html

ETH news link: https://www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2015/10/cure-for-vitamin-b6-deficiency.html