New Delhi, Oct. 17 -- A sandwich made for her father sparked an unusual scientific question for Gabriella Rothberg: could a tomato be engineered to taste like a hamburger? Two years later, the 17-year-old student from Miami is pursuing that idea through a biotechnology project that could eventually change how certain foods are developed.

Rothberg, a senior at Ransom Everglades School in Florida, is working on Impossible Vines, a project aimed at genetically engineering tomato plants to produce heme, an iron-containing molecule associated with the characteristic flavour of meat.

She is collaborating with Maddison Marshall, a doctoral candidate at the University of Miami, to develop the technology.

According to reports by The Miami New T...