Gene expression profiles of MON810 and comparable non-GM maize varieties cultured in the field are more similar than are those of conventional lines

Abstract

Maize is a major food crop and genetically modified (GM) varieties represented 24% of the global production in 2007. Authorized GM organisms have been tested for human and environmental safety. We previously used microarrays to compare the transcriptome profiles of widely used commercial MON810 versus near-isogenic varieties and reported differential expression of a small set of sequences in leaves of in vitro cultured plants of AristisBt/Aristis and PR33P67/PR33P66 (Coll et al. 2008). Here we further assessed the significance of these differential expression patterns in plants grown in a real context, i.e. in the field. Most sequences that were differentially expressed in plants cultured in vitro had the same expression values in MON810 and comparable varieties when grown in the field; and no sequence was found to be differentially regulated in the two variety pairs grown in the field. The differential expression patterns observed between in vitro and field culture were similar between MON810 and comparable varieties, with higher divergence between the two conventional varieties. This further indicates that MON810 and comparable non-GM varieties are equivalent except for the introduced character.

Transcriptome and metabolome profiling of field-grown transgenic barley lack induced differences but show cultivar-specific variances

“…Metabolome analysis of Bt-maize by NMR also revealed significant differences in free amino acid contents of the parental line; however, other likely-influential factors were not assessed in this study (9). Comparative transcript profiling of different maize cultivars harboring an identical Bt transgene insertion event revealed that the variability between cultivars was much greater than the influence of the transgene (10,11). Independently, comparison of the potato tuber proteome of 21…”

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

“…When performing transcriptomic studies using in vitro-or field-grown maize (Zea mays) plants, Coll et al (2008Coll et al ( , 2009 found differential expression for a minority of transcripts between in vitro-grown MON810 (insectresistant of Bt type) and control lines, and most of these differences were not observed in the field. In real agricultural conditions, under two farming practices (conventional and low-nitrogen fertilization), Coll et al (2010a) found differential expression for only 0.14% of the analyzed sequences (approximately one-third of the maize genome).…”

Characterization of maize allergens — MON810 vs. its non-transgenic counterpart

“…The obtained lyophilized pellets were dissolved in solubilisation buffer [2 M thiourea, 0.4% (v/v) Triton X-100, 7 M urea, 4% (w/v) CHAPS, 1% immobilized pH gradient (IPG) buffer [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. The protein was measured according to Ramagli [17], with albumin from chicken egg white (Sigma) as standard.…”

“…The European Food Safety Authority panel on GMOs, recommends searching for known allergens [2] and evaluating the possible effects of the genetic modification in GM plants [3] by comparing compositional data of the GM plant versus the non-GM counterpart, using either targeted or non-targeted profiling techniques. There are already several examples that validate the use of proteomics [4][5][6][7], transcriptomics [4,8,9] and metabolomics [4,10,11] techniques to perform substantial equivalence analysis of transgenic plants.…”