Genetic engineering of plants has come a long way in recent years. It was first used to make more robust crops, then more nutritious and efficient crops. Now, scientists at the University of New Hampshire are tweaking tea plants to create an un-caffeinated variety.

Camellia sinensis is the plant from which virtually all caffeinated teas derive. UNH neuroscience major Laura Van Beaver has been working to flip one particular gene like a switch, which changes the plant in a significant way.

then it essentially isnt functional because its in the wrong direction. And it will stop the biosynthetic pathway of the production of caffeine.

RL: And in laymans terms that means

That caffeine wont be produced.

You heard right. Genetically decaffeinated tea. The process was first demonstrated in Japan on coffee. Van Beaver is essentially following the same procedure. Shes isolated the gene and the school lab already has a means of introducing it to a tea plant.

Yea, lets see the gun. The gene gun.

Professor Subhash Minocha shows me a metal box about the size of a waste basket connected by a tube to a tall air tank. The target is a petri dish of plant cells.

"Tea is the most widely drunk beverage on earth."

Minocha loads the gene gun with a tiny dab of gene-carrying plasmids mixed into some very fine gold dust. When it fires, the gold particles spray down onto the cells in the petri dish.

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UNH Undergrad Seeks To Produce First Genetically Decaffeinated Tea Plant