Overexpression of epsps transgene in weedy rice: insufficient evidence to support speculations about biosafety

Abstract

Editorial Note: the Letter from Gressel et al. states that sequence data were not supplied in Wang et al. (2014), despite this being a requirement of the Journal. In light of this, New Phytologist has taken steps to ensure that authors must, if their paper includes new sequence data, provide the relevant accession numbers. In addition, we have made our policy on data deposition explicit by amending our Author Guidelines. These now state that New Phytologist requires authors to make their data available to readers and interested parties upon reasonable request.

Scientific data published by a peer‐reviewed journal should be properly interpreted: a reply to the letter by Gressel et al. (2014)

“…In our case, the cost of developing and breeding several transgenic events into multiple weedy rice accessions led us to focus on a single transgenic event. Contrary to the implications of Gressel et al., our methods and interpretations regarding fitness‐related effects of the epsps transgene are similar in approach to many previous ecological publications on this topic (e.g. Stewart et al ., ; Snow et al ., , ; Burke & Rieseberg, ; Vacher et al ., ; Chen et al ., ; Guadagnuolo et al ., ; Laughlin et al ., ; Sasu et al ., ; Londo et al ., ; Xia et al ., ; Yang et al ., , ).…”

“…Gressel et al . argued that we did not provide sufficient details about the transgenic construct in our parental EP3 transgenic rice line, making it difficult to evaluate or reproduce our study, nor did we explain how its glyphosate resistance was documented. This was an oversight on our part.…”

“…Before accepting Gressel et al .'s critique, we encourage readers to study our publication and reflect on the content, nuances and caveats that cannot be captured in media reports or letters to the Editor. Also, it is important to distinguish between our interpretation of the data and the interpretation of our data by others, including the opinions mentioned in Nature (Qiu, ) and those of Gressel et al . Below, we discuss four major issues related to Gressel et al .'s interpretation of our original paper.…”

“…Gressel et al . argue that our fitness study was ‘flawed’ and ‘highly artificial’. We found that F 2 GE crop–weed hybrids produced 48–125% more seeds per plant than their nonGE counterparts in common garden field experiments.…”

“…Gressel et al . (; in this issue of New Phytologist , pp. 360–362) disapprove of media coverage of our recent peer‐reviewed paper (Wang et al ., ; this issue of New Phytologist , pp.…”