Recent progress on environmental biosafety assessment of genetically modified trees and floricultural plants in Japan

Abstract

A broad spectrum of living modified organisms (LMOs) have been developed and commercial production of them have already been started. It is the global requirement to conduct environmental biosafety after the implementation of Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. Environmental biosafety assessment is of cardinal importance even in confined field trials and at the deliberate release to an environment for practical uses. It is necessary to collect various categories of data prior to fields; not only about the morphological and physiological traits of the LMOs in some confined experimental facilities, but also about characteristics of host organisms in the natural habitat and field for intended releases. Environmental release of LMOs is possible only after collected information is examined systematically and comprehensively in a scientifically-sound manner, and target end-points of such uses are well-identified. Environmental biosafety assessments principally require case-by-case evaluation. Gene-flow, allelopathy and invasiveness are three key aspects in GM plants. In Japan, many crop species do not have their wild relatives due to their historical introduction from overseas. Furthermore, crops grow properly only under agricultural practices, and invasive weediness of these plants is very likely low. In contrast, floricultural plants and trees have related native species located around the fields that can cross with the transgenic counterparts in many cases. In this review, we examine the environmental biosafety assessment of LMO floricultural plants and trees enumerating the example of field trials in Japan, and describe concepts that should be noted for the commercial cultivation and environmental release of these species.

Establishment of a homogenized method for environmental biosafety assessments of transgenic plants

“…Although some transgenic plants have been approved for general use (Kikuchi et al 2006(Kikuchi et al , 2008, precautionary environmental biosafety assessments of transgenic plants must be conducted. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety promulgated guidelines for evaluating the biosafety of Living Modified Organisms (http://www.biodiv.org/ biosafety/).…”

GMO Safety Assessment-Feasibility of Bioassay to Detect Allelopathy Using Handy Sandwich Method in Transgenic Plants

“…Even if the chemical changes were induced during sample preparation (drying or homogenization process), it would be thought to reflect the chemical differences between the transgenic and non-transgenic plants ). In the floricultural plants, the transgenic carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus) expressing flavonoid 3', 5'-hydroxylase gene (Moon series, www.florigene.com), assessing the allelopathic substances was done by lettuce seed germination bioassay tests in soil containing carnation debris (Kikuchi, 2008).For further study, toxicology and allergenicity testing of products from introduced genes should be carried out before commercialization of transgenic plants. Pox 27,29,44,49,53 and 62; transgenic aspen E; Eucalyptus cinerea Bar; standard error Trees have many characteristics that make them more difficult to assess them than those of agricultural crops: they have long life cycle, the production cycle may be 10 to 70 years, pollen moves over enormous distance, there are tremendous genetic and phenotypic variation and ecological complexity (McLean and Charrest, 2000).…”

Advances in genetic engineering of marine algae

“…For the human health concerns, the biosafety evaluation could refer to the methods applied in higher plants (Kikuchi et al, 2008, Maliga and Maliga, 2006, Oh et al, 2011, Ramessar et al, 2007 to guarantee that there are no poisonous substances and allergens. However, with the aim to remove the potential threats to human health from the genetically transformed marine algae, it is necessary to develop 'completely marine algae-derived' vectors, which includes searching for endogenous promoters, establishing a directional foreign gene integration platform according to algal homologous recombination, substituting antibiotic selection genes for an endogenous selection system of reverse mutation, and replacing animal virus DNA sequences with algal endogenous vectors or algal virus DNA sequences.…”