Application of food and feed safety assessment principles to evaluate transgenic approaches to gene modulation in crops

Editor’s Choice: Evaluating the Potential for Adverse Interactions within Genetically Engineered Breeding Stacks

“…Recent studies have measured the molecular parameters that might be involved in heterosis (Auger et al, 2005;Keurentjes et al, 2006;SwansonWagner et al, 2006;Hochholdinger and Hoecker, 2007;Groszmann et al, 2011); these studies clearly indicate that thousands of nonadditive interactions are occurring when genomes are combined by breeding. Furthermore, these gene interactions have sometimes led to gene silencing, which has been unknowingly selected by plant breeders to obtain desirable traits (Parrott et al, 2010).…”

“…Interestingly, many products of conventional breeding of non-GE plants depend on phenotypes now known to have been created from alterations in transcription factors or from gene silencing (Parrott et al, 2010). To the extent that conventional breeding has involved crossing plants with unique phenotypes associated with silencing or changes in transcription factors, there is no indication that altered metabolite pools have resulted in any novel risk to food or feed safety.…”

Do genetically modified crops affect animal reproduction? A review of the ongoing debate

“…However, current risk assessment practices recommend evaluating the safety of transgenic proteins, confirming that no potentially toxic proteins are engineered into crops (Parrott et al, 2010). Factors such as pH and pepsin-to-substrate ratio greatly influence the digestion of Cry1Ab proteins suggesting that an in-vitro digestibility test that is new and more physiologically relevant should be involved such that the resistance of a protein to digestion can be studied (Guimaraes et al, 2010).…”

Evaluation of Genetically Engineered Crops Using Transcriptomic, Proteomic, and Metabolomic Profiling Techniques

“…beyond the pairwise comparison of a GE line and its near isogenic line), the most pronounced differences were consistently found between the various conventional varieties, a trend linked to the crop diversity maintained or created by plant breeders. This should be put in perspective, taking into account that conventional breeding is generally regarded as safe, despite the fact that the nature of the changes in new conventional cultivars is usually unknown (Parrott et al, 2010).…”