enzyme – GMO SAFETY

Research

The Legacy of the GMO movement- the Flavr Savr tomato

Editorial Posted On May 6, 2016

Each movement has its mascots and icons that are emblazoned in the minds of the public as being representative of the whole. For cloning animals it had been Dolly the sheep, for transgenic animals it had been the goats who had spider silk producing genes implanted in them to make their milk into spider silk fibers, and for the genetically modified plant movement the Flavr Savr tomato by Monsanto had become the face of what some worried was the future of their gardens.

What the Flavr Savr tomato had hoped to accomplish in the early days would be seen as tame by the ambitions set forth by modified plants today. As the name suggests, the only alteration to the tomato had been to allow the tomato to ripen for longer on the vine, which would have hopefully resulted in a longer shelf life and a better, more full taste. This was accomplished through the deactivating of one of its processes. As the article “Tomatoes” on gmo-compass explained, the process to create the tomato was called the Antisense approach and it occurred by the deactivating of the creation of an enzyme, called polygalacturonase, that was in charge of the fruit softening.

What ended up happening was much different, though. Though the Flavr Savr tomatoes had passed the legislation necessary to be on market back in the day, they had turned out to be a market failure, not recouping the cost of their creation and distribution. In addition to that, modified tomatoes have had a lengthy battle in the European Union, where they had trouble being passed as safe for consumption. The same article on gmo-compass states that tomato puree had been very popular in Great Britain, but that nearly all other states could not decide whether they had wanted to legalize the sale and consumption of the plant, and whether they had deemed it safe, which eventually led to the removal of all pending applications by modified crop producers. There are no modified tomatoes for sale in any markets in the EU now.

This doesn’t mean that the tomato was a total loss. There are plenty of scientists today who are trying to figure out ways to alter the tomatoes to give them more traits like better herbicide and pesticide resistance, or a natural defense against pesticides. With the strides made in the modifying of other fruits and vegetables, there are always more options to apply to tomatoes before they are sent for approval to the market again.

But in a young biotech industry the fact was that what captured the imagination of the public about the possibilities had been a small red tomato called the Flavr Savr. For some it was the opportunity at technology making a better life for people once again, preserving taste and serving as a gateway to a future of even better traits and possibilities for what crops could be for people around the world. The tomato had also served as a scary beacon of the overreach of science, with a new technology that was too young to be fully studied in the biological ramifications it caused to consumers and to a crossing of the natural boundaries where we weren’t meant to tread.

The Flavr Savor became a casualty of a culture war over genetic modification the world over, but for both good and bad it cemented itself as the progenitor of what would become one of the most contested and transformative scientific movements the world had ever seen.

Source:
Gmocompass. (2016). Tomatoes. Gmo-compass. Retrieved on May 5, 2016 from http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/grocery_shopping/fruit_vegetables/15.genetically_modified_tomatoes.html

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Research / Scientific debate

Production of GMO Roundup Ready Soy plants

Editorial Posted On May 6, 2016

There is a broad range of methods that are employed in the process of producing GMOs. This often involves insertion of a gene of interest into living organisms depending on the species that you are working on. In plants mainly, two most common biotechnology-based techniques include; Agrobacterium-mediated transformation and bombardment of particles. According to the regulations given by FSANZ, it is a requirement that clear description of the method employed in genetically engineering plants is given.

Case study- Roundup Ready soy

This was produced using the particle bombardment method. This process of biotechnologically engineering soybeans involved; bombardment of the plant cells with microscopic particles of gold coated with DNA that contains the gene of interest. The gene of interest is the EPSPS gene that is derived from Agrobacterium. The aim of this is to introduce the novel gene of interest through the cell wall so that it integrates into the genetic material of the soy plant.

The new round up soy that is genetically engineered contains a new gene that codes for the EPSPS enzyme. The new plant cell controls the activity of all the genes through the use of regulatory sequences. These regulatory sequences do not code for any protein but rather plays a central role in the regulation of gene activity in the soy plant by either switching the genes on or switching them off. However, in the case of the roundup soy, plant cells often do not recognize the regulatory genes derived from bacterial cells. This means that when the regulatory sequences are introduced from the bacterium into the plant, the regulatory DNA has to be replaced with those that can be recognized by the plant. Thus, the EPSPS gene derived from Agrobacterium works in the soy plant through replacement with those that are recognized by the soy plant.

The figure above demonstrates the manner in which gene regulation takes place in the roundup soy. At the front of the bacterial EPSPS gene in the roundup, soy is the regulatory sequence that directs the plant to switch genes on or off. This is the CaMV 35S promoter sequence is derived from cauliflower mosaic virus. At the end of the EPSPS gene is another regulatory gene that directs the gene of interest to end. This is referred to as NOS 3’’ and is derived from nopaline synthase gene in bacteria but can function in plants.

Another regulatory sequence that is introduced into the soy plant is the chloroplast transit peptide gene that is derived from a petunia. The role of this gene is to direct the soy plant cell to transport the bacterial EPSPS gene into the chloroplast of the plant cell. This is because for the soy plant to demonstrate tolerance to roundup herbicides, the EPSPS enzyme has to be present in the chloroplast. This is because this is the location where the amino acids that make up the protein are produced. Once the EPSPS enzyme is in the chloroplast, the chloroplast transit peptide is eliminated for the gene of interest to function.

With this GMO soy plant, standard molecular biotechnological methods were employed in demonstrating that a single complete copy of the bacterial EPSPS gene was present and flanked by two DNA sequences found in the genome of the roundup ready soy plant. This is an indication that the right size and correct sequence of the gene of interest were genetically engineered into the soy plant to confer resistance to herbicides.

Additionally, the novel gene introduced into the roundup ready soy was assessed in the third and the sixth generation of soy plants using biotechnological approaches. This indicated that the new gene of interest was stable and had integrated itself well into the Soy genome. Again, the roundup ready feature of the soy plant was examined across a wide range of generations thus indicating its ability to be passed on from the parents to the offspring in a rational and predictable manner following the laws of heredity.

The issues that arise from the discovery and production of the GM roundup ready soy are mostly relevant to the potential transfer of the gene that confers antibiotic resistance from the GM soy foods to the gut of the bacteria. However, it is important to note that roundup ready GM soy does not contain the antibiotic resistance gene, but the only gene that could potentially be transferred to the human digestive system is the bacterial EPSPS gene. This gene does not have any impact on the people’s health since EPSPS gene in the GM soy plant functions in a similar manner as the one predominantly found in the bacterial gut. There is also no evidence that points at the ability of the new gene in GM soy having a potential to integrate into the DNA genome of humans and thus poses no known health hazard. Additionally, there is no sequence similarity to the gene to allergens and thus has no ability to cause allergenic reactions.

The genetically engineered soy is similar in structure as well as function to the naturally occurring soy plants while the EPSPS gene in plants and bacteria are also similar regarding the roles they play. However, the difference between the two soy varieties is based on the fact that the GM soy is more tolerant to herbicides as compared to the other naturally occurring type. According to scientific publications of GM soy, there is a single amino acid alteration in the EPSPS enzyme that confers its tolerance to glyphosate. On the other hand, the bacterial EPSPS enzyme is made up of over 400 amino acids. Additionally, bacterial EPSPS levels present in fresh edible soy constitutes less than 0.1 % of the total protein levels. According to research, the enzyme of interest in the GM soy has not been demonstrated to have any activity when eaten. This is because the enzyme is inactivated upon exposure to heat during food processing.

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