Genetic use restriction technologies: a review

Abstract

Summary Genetic use restriction technologies (GURTs), developed to secure return on investments through protection of plant varieties, are among the most controversial and opposed genetic engineering biotechnologies as they are perceived as a tool to force farmers to depend on multinational corporations' seed monopolies. In this work, the currently proposed strategies are described and compared with some of the principal techniques implemented for preventing transgene flow and/or seed saving, with a simultaneous analysis of the future perspectives of GURTs taking into account potential benefits, possible impacts on farmers and local plant genetic resources (PGR), hypothetical negative environmental issues and ethical concerns related to intellectual property that have led to the ban of this technology.

Transgene Biocontainment Strategies for Molecular Farming

“…Genetic use restriction technologies were originally developed to prevent farmers from infringing on patents by saving seed. They have been some of the most controversial GM biotechnologies due to the widespread perception that they were designed to entrench a multinational corporation seed monopoly (Lombardo, 2014). GURTs use a tightly controlled genetic system to regulate the expression of a target gene.…”

“…The amplified input becomes a biological signal that activates the trait switch. The trait switch usually encodes an enzyme, such as a site-specific recombinase that removes the blocker sequence (Lombardo, 2014). Without the blocker sequence there can then be transcription and expression of the target gene.…”

Genetic Engineering and Sustainable Crop Disease Management: Opportunities for Case-by-Case Decision-Making

“…Breeders can take advantage of gametic incompatibility, which can block fertilization of non-GE corn kernels by GE pollen [145]. Additional options exist for mitigating the risk of transgene flow [130,144,146,147]. Since in some crops, the risk of transgene flow may be greatly minimized but remain non-zero, some may argue for GE to be limited to non-transgenic applications.…”

Genetic use restriction technologies and possible applications in the integrated pest management

“…Various mitigation and containment strategies of transgene flow are suggested in the literature, such as male sterility (WEIDER et al, 2009), gene silencing via RNAi (LI et al, 2008), cleistogamy (YOSHIDA et al, 2007) and GURTs (HILLS et al, 2007;VAN ACKER et al, 2007;LOMBARDO, 2014). Limitation of using male sterility, gene silencing and cleistogamy is because they are not completely effective and some gene flow can still occur.…”