The Flavr Savr Tomato, an Early Example of RNAi Technology

Abstract

The Flavr Savr tomato was introduced as the first genetically engineered whole food in 1994. The commercial event, resulting from transformation with an antisense expression cassette of the endogenous polygalacturonase gene, was sequenced and found to contain two contiguous, linked, transfer DNA insertions. We found polygalacturonase suppression correlates with accumulation of ≈21-nt small interfering RNAs, the hallmark of an RNA interference-mediated suppression mechanism.