You’d cry, too.
Researchers in New Zealand and Japan have engineered what they describe as a “tear-free” onion, according to a report from the AFP wire service. The happy onion was developed by the Crop and Food Research institute. The lead scientist on the project, Colin Eady, described how it was done:
“We previously thought the tearing agent was produced spontaneously by cutting onions, but [a Japanese research team] proved it was controlled by an enzyme,” he told AFP from his home outside Christchurch. “Here in New Zealand we had the ability to insert DNA into onions, using gene-silencing technology developed by Australian scientists. The technology creates a sequence that switches off the tear-inducing gene in the onion so it doesn’t produce the enzyme. So when you slice the vegetable, it doesn’t produce tears.”
(read the rest of the AFP article on Yahoo! news)
Genetic modification isn’t all that scary if you really think about it. And though nothing may be more valuable than the ability to make tears cease to flow, for bananas – aside from developing one that’s friendlier to pedestrians – the mission is more conventional: strengthen the fruit so that it will grow better, resist disease, and reduce the use of harmful chemicals that damage the environment and the health of plantation workers.
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman 
