Kartik Khurana
KARTIK KHURANA is a lively five-year-old who loves to chatter. His mother, Mohini, calls him the “live wire of the house, who makes sure nobody sleeps before he does and nobody wakes up after he does”. Kartik, a class one student at Faith Academy in Delhi, has the alphabet, rhymes and numbers at his fingertips. However, there is one thing that has been worrying his parents—his eyesight. At such a young age, Kartik sports bright-blue glasses. His left eye is valued at 3.0 (spherical) while his right eye is valued at 1.5 (cylindrical). This means Kartik has to wear his spectacles at all times, except when he is bathing and sleeping. Upon consultation, Mohini found that her son had dry eye and a moderate level of vitamin A deficiency. “They told us they will soon start a vitamin supplement for him in the form of a tonic to help better his vision,” says Mohini. “The doctor also told us to make sure he consumes at least three to four carrots a day, as juice preferably, so that he gets a good amount of vitamin A.”
Dr Kulin Kothari, a leading ophthalmologist, advises his patients to eat food rich in vitamin A, such as papayas, mangoes and carrots, and to take vitamin A supplements. “The World Health Organization estimated that nearly 190 million preschool children suffer from micronutrient deficiency, a majority of which is vitamin A-related,” he says. “It is estimated that approximately 40,000 children in India are at risk of losing their eyesight due to this deficiency. Vitamin A is an essential nutrient whose deficiency can result from dietary deficiency, malabsorption of fat or liver disease.”
Interestingly, CRISPR/Cas9, a gene-editing tool, could be of help in this case. Scientists are working on how they can use CRISPR/Cas9 to give bananas a higher amount of beta carotene—which converts into vitamin A inside the body—in a way that eating one banana may give a person the necessary amount of vitamin A his or her body demands. Along with making the potassium-rich fruit disease- and pathogen-resistant, scientists at India's National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute in Mohali are also working to enrich it nutritionally, by modifying its genome.
Siddharth Tiwari, the lead researcher and project head, says, “As per guidelines of the Indian Council of Medical Research, an adult's total requirement of vitamin A is 600 micrograms a day, while that of a child is between 300 and 400. But, we do not usually attain this requirement in a day. Now, one typical banana has around 400 micrograms of beta carotene per 100 grams, which is far less compared with our requirement, which is 4,800 micrograms. So, CRISPR helps us increase the content twelvefold, so that we get the amount of beta carotene in the fruit as per our desire.”