Meet Gabriella Rothberg, 17, who turned a sandwich idea into a patent for meat-flavoured tomatoes

Gabriella hopes the technology could make vegetables taste like meat (AI-enhanced photo: Instagram/Incubate Debate) A sandwich Gabriella Rothberg was making for her father when she was 15 led to an unusual question- Could a tomato be made to taste like meat? Two years later, the 17-year-old student from Miami is listed as a co-inventor on a US patent for genetically engineered tomatoes designed to produce heme, an iron-containing molecule associated with the flavour of meat.Gabriella, a senior at Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove, worked on the project with her father, biotechnology entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg. The two are named as inventors on US Patent No. 12,668,806, issued in June this year. According to a report by Biscayne Bay Beacon, the patent has been assigned to Impossible Vines Inc.The idea behind the project is to develop tomatoes that produce heme, which contributes to the characteristic flavour of meat. Gabriella hopes the technology could eventually make vegetables taste more like meat without requiring them to be processed into conventional plant-based meat substitutes.However, the project is still experimental. The genetically engineered tomatoes have no...