Quote from Preston in Agbioview
"Finally, the most striking outcome of these two papers is the staggering amount of work that was done to demonstrate that GM potatoes differ less from their parental cultivar than do other
cultivars of the same crop. This should be ample demonstration of the precise nature of GM technology compared to "normal" cross-breeding."
GMO Pundit's Editorial Comment.
Chris Preston, perhaps the most astute and well trained commentator on this general GMO topic in Australia, has picked up an important scientific advance which unlike most advances, confirms current informed opinion rather than breaks new ground. Its as if modern mathematians had carried out billions of simulations with a supercomputer and had verified at great expense that all points on the circumference of a circle are equally distant from one point which they label "the centre of the said geometrical construct".
In everyday terms, they have reinvented the wheel, but for good reason.
Previously the US National Academy of Science Report completed 2003, published 2004 had predicted this outcome, as had many mainsteam scientific acadmies and most trained geneticists. Genetic variation within transgenic crops is expected to be within a wider range of variation displayed by conventional breeds. Chris explains this in appropriate detail below.
(see full NAS Report Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects (2004) by Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) Institute of Medicine (IOM) Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources (BANR) Board on Life Sciences (BLS))
It is a point repeatedly misunderstood by politicised anti-technology lobby groups (for example, Greenpeace)
The complete commentary by Dr Preston starts out:
Studies of GM Potatoes Demonstrate Substantial Equivalence
- Christopher Preston, AgBioView, Nov. 1, 2005; www.agbioworld.org
(Sr Lecturer, Univ. Adelaide, Australia; christopher.preston-at-adelaide.edu.au)
In the past 4 months there have been two major studies on the impact of genetic modification of potatoes published. The first was published in Plant Physiology in July 2005 - "Comparison of Tuber Proteomes of Potato Varieties, Landraces, and Genetically Modified Lines" by Lehesranta et al. (Plant Physiology 138, 1690-1699). The second was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA in October - "Hierarchical metabolomics demonstrates substantial compositional similarity between genetically modified and conventional potato crops" by Catchpole et al. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 102, 14458-14462).............Continued at Agbioview
Abstracts and Links to original papers:
PLANT BIOLOGY
Hierarchical metabolomics demonstrates substantial compositional similarity between genetically modified and conventional potato crops
Gareth S. Catchpole , Manfred Beckmann, David P. Enot, Madhav Mondhe, Britta Zywicki, Janet Taylor, Nigel Hardy, Aileen Smith, Ross D. King, Douglas B. Kell, Oliver Fiehn and John Draper
*Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, D-14424 Golm, Germany; and Institute of Biological Sciences and Department of Computer Science, University of Wales, Aberystwyth SY23 3DA, United Kingdom
There is current debate whether genetically modified (GM) plants might contain unexpected, potentially undesirable changes in overall metabolite composition. However, appropriate analytical technology and acceptable metrics of compositional similarity require development. We describe a comprehensive comparison of total metabolites in field-grown GM and conventional potato tubers using a hierarchical approach initiating with rapid metabolome "fingerprinting" to guide more detailed profiling of metabolites where significant differences are suspected. Central to this strategy are data analysis procedures able to generate validated, reproducible metrics of comparison from complex metabolome data. We show that, apart from targeted changes, these GM potatoes in this study appear substantially equivalent to traditional cultivars.
Comparison of Tuber Proteomes of Potato Varieties, Landraces, and Genetically Modified Lines
Satu J. Lehesranta, Howard V. Davies, Louise V.T. Shepherd, Naoise Nunan, Jim W. McNicol, Seppo Auriola, Kaisa M. Koistinen, Soile Suomalainen, Harri I. Kokko and Sirpa O. Kärenlampi
Institute of Applied Biotechnology (S.J.L., K.M.K., S.S., H.I.K., S.O.K.), and Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry (S.A.), University of Kuopio, FIN–70211 Kuopio, Finland; and Quality, Health and Nutrition Programme (H.V.D., L.V.T.S.), and Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (N.N., J.W.M.), Scottish Crop Research Institute, Invergowrie, Dundee DD2 5DA, Scotland, United Kingdom
Crop improvement by genetic modification remains controversial, one of the major issues being the potential for unintended effects. Comparative safety assessment includes targeted analysis of key nutrients and antinutritional factors, but broader scale-profiling or "omics" methods could increase the chances of detecting unintended effects. Comparative assessment should consider the extent of natural variation and not simply compare genetically modified (GM) lines and parental controls. In this study, potato (Solanum tuberosum) proteome diversity has been assessed using a range of diverse non-GM germplasm. In addition, a selection of GM potato lines was compared to assess the potential for unintended differences in protein profiles. Clear qualitative and quantitative differences were found in the protein patterns of the varieties and landraces examined, with 1,077 of 1,111 protein spots analyzed showing statistically significant differences. The diploid species Solanum phureja could be clearly differentiated from tetraploid (Solanum tuberosum) genotypes. Many of the proteins apparently contributing to genotype differentiation are involved in disease and defense responses, the glycolytic pathway, and sugar metabolism or protein targeting/storage. Only nine proteins out of 730 showed significant differences between GM lines and their controls. There was much less variation between GM lines and their non-GM controls compared with that found between different varieties and landraces. A number of proteins were identified by mass spectrometry and added to a potato tuber two-dimensional protein map
Later GMO Pundit Post relating to a biosafety review article by Lehesranta
The Full Monty on GM Food Animal Feeding Tests.
Interesting article as for me. I'd like to read more about that topic.
ReplyDeleteBy the way look at the design I've made myself London escort