The challenges of delivering genetically modified crops with nutritional enhancement traits

Napier, Johnathan A.; Haslam, Richard P.; Tsalavouta, Matina; Sayanova, Olga

doi:10.1038/s41477-019-0430-z

Cited by 52 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…For example, biochemical engineering has been used to enrich tomatoes for improved health benefits to consumers (Butelli et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2015). Nevertheless, a major lesson from golden rice is that outstanding plant science alone does not suffice to achieve positive societal impact: research achievements also need to be coupled with efforts to improve prospects for commercialization and consumer acceptance (Napier, Haslam, Tsalavouta, & Sayanova, 2019). These efforts begin with tailoring such research to the communities and cultures of the intended beneficiaries and working with in‐country regulatory agencies to continually improve science‐based risk assessment.…”

Section: Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plant science decadal vision 2020–2030: Reimagining the potential of plants for a healthy and sustainable future

et al. 2020

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Plants, and the biological systems around them, are key to the future health of the planet and its inhabitants. The Plant Science Decadal Vision 2020–2030 frames our ability to perform vital and far‐reaching research in plant systems sciences, essential to how we value participants and apply emerging technologies. We outline a comprehensive vision for addressing some of our most pressing global problems through discovery, practical applications, and education. The Decadal Vision was developed by the participants at the Plant Summit 2019, a community event organized by the Plant Science Research Network. The Decadal Vision describes a holistic vision for the next decade of plant science that blends recommendations for research, people, and technology. Going beyond discoveries and applications, we, the plant science community, must implement bold, innovative changes to research cultures and training paradigms in this era of automation, virtualization, and the looming shadow of climate change. Our vision and hopes for the next decade are encapsulated in the phrase reimagining the potential of plants for a healthy and sustainable future. The Decadal Vision recognizes the vital intersection of human and scientific elements and demands an integrated implementation of strategies for research (Goals 1–4), people (Goals 5 and 6), and technology (Goals 7 and 8). This report is intended to help inspire and guide the research community, scientific societies, federal funding agencies, private philanthropies, corporations, educators, entrepreneurs, and early career researchers over the next 10 years. The research encompass experimental and computational approaches to understanding and predicting ecosystem behavior; novel production systems for food, feed, and fiber with greater crop diversity, efficiency, productivity, and resilience that improve ecosystem health; approaches to realize the potential for advances in nutrition, discovery and engineering of plant‐based medicines, and "green infrastructure." Launching the Transparent Plant will use experimental and computational approaches to break down the phytobiome into a "parts store" that supports tinkering and supports query, prediction, and rapid‐response problem solving. Equity, diversity, and inclusion are indispensable cornerstones of realizing our vision. We make recommendations around funding and systems that support customized professional development. Plant systems are frequently taken for granted therefore we make recommendations to improve plant awareness and community science programs to increase understanding of scientific research. We prioritize emerging technologies, focusing on non‐invasive imaging, sensors, and plug‐and‐play portable lab technologies, coupled with enabling computational advances. Plant systems science will benefit from data management and future advances in automation, machine learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence‐assisted data integration, pattern identification, and decision making. Implementation of th...

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Section: Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plant science decadal vision 2020–2030: Reimagining the potential of plants for a healthy and sustainable future

et al. 2020

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“…Currently, more than 99% of the land that is cultivated with GM crops carries crops with either Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) genes for pest control or genes inducing tolerance to herbicides (p. 563 in [54]; p. 92-94 in [55]). Both of these crop modifications were developed with increased yields as the primary breeding goal (although, as just mentioned, Bt crops have the important environmental advantage of reducing the use of problematic pesticides).…”

Section: The Selection Of Breeding Goalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Science-Informed Ethics for Agricultural Biotechnology

2019

Crop Breed Genet Genom.

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This overview of ethical issues in plant breeding and agricultural biotechnology puts emphasis on the scientific consensus as the basis for ethical studies and discussions. An introduction is given to major ethical issues in plant breeding, including the selection of socially important breeding goals such as environmental and nutritional improvements, the measures needed to ensure that sufficient priority is given to such breeding goals, potential risks and how they should be weighed against benefits, the interpretation of the precautionary principle, intellectual property rights, and the construction of a labelling system for biotechnological products. Some of the common arguments against agricultural biotechnology are also discussed, among them arguments referring to negative effects of yield increases, the dominance of big companies, and the alleged unnaturalness of biotechnology.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As well, in the last decades, the main achievements in this area were genetically improved plants tolerant to herbicide and resistant to insects. Others, like nutritional composition improvements are ongoing [2]. Furthermore, new mechanisms for genome editing are improving the accuracy and speed of genome modifications in plants, such as the CRISPR/CAS system [3,4].Regarding climate change and environmental factors, plants are being genetically modified to become resilient to abiotic stresses, such as drought, high temperature, rising atmospheric CO2, to potentially overcome the yield losses due to these factors [5,6].Intellectual property rights (IPR) are vastly used by biotechnology enterprises for their GM plants, to allow exclusive rights and provide better returns for the high investments in research and development [7].…”

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confidence: 99%

Plant Co-expression Annotation Resource: a webserver for identifying targets for genetically modified crop breeding pipelines

Viana¹,

Zerlotini

Mudadu

2020

Preprint

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BackgroundThe development of genetically modified crops (GM) includes the discovery of candidate genes through bioinformatics analysis using genomics data, gene expression, and others. Proteins of unknown function (PUFs) are interesting targets for GM crops breeding pipelines for the novelty associated to such targets and also to avoid copyright protections. One method of inferring the putative function of PUFs is by relating them to factors of interest such as abiotic stresses using orthology and co-expression networks, in a guilt-by-association manner. ResultsIn this regard, we have downloaded, analyzed, and processed genomics data of 53 angiosperms, totaling 1,862,010 genes and 2,332,974 RNA. Diamond and InterproScan were used to discover 72,266 PUFs for all organisms. RNA-seq datasets related to abiotic stresses were downloaded from NCBI/GEO. The RNA-seq data was used as input to the LSTrAP software to construct co-expression networks. LSTrAP also created clusters of transcripts with correlated expression, whose members are more probably related to the molecular mechanisms associated to abiotic stresses in the plants.Orthologous groups were created (OrhtoMCL) using all 2,332,974 proteins in order to associate PUFs to abiotic stress related clusters of co-expression and therefore infer their function in a guilt-byassociation manner. ConclusionA freely available web resource named "Plant Co-expression Annotation Resource" (https://www.machado.cnptia.embrapa.br/plantannot), Plantannot, was created to provide indexed queries to search for PUF putatively associated to abiotic stresses. The web interface also allows browsing, querying and retrieving of public genomics data from 53 plants. We hope Plantannot to be useful for researchers trying to obtain novel GM crops resistant to climate change hazards. BACKGROUNDIn the last decades, the ability to genetically engineer plants with success showed the potential to create genetically modified (GM) crops with favourable economic outcomes [1]. As well, in the last decades, the main achievements in this area were genetically improved plants tolerant to herbicide and resistant to insects. Others, like nutritional composition improvements are ongoing [2]. Furthermore, new mechanisms for genome editing are improving the accuracy and speed of genome modifications in plants, such as the CRISPR/CAS system [3,4].Regarding climate change and environmental factors, plants are being genetically modified to become resilient to abiotic stresses, such as drought, high temperature, rising atmospheric CO2, to potentially overcome the yield losses due to these factors [5,6].Intellectual property rights (IPR) are vastly used by biotechnology enterprises for their GM plants, to allow exclusive rights and provide better returns for the high investments in research and development [7]. In this way, over the last years many patents applications for genetically improved crops regarding stress tolerance were filled [8].

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The challenges of delivering genetically modified crops with nutritional enhancement traits

Abstract: The challenges of delivering genetically modified crops with nutritional enhancement traits. Nature Plants. 5, pp. 563-567.

Cited by 52 publications

References 30 publications

Plant science decadal vision 2020–2030: Reimagining the potential of plants for a healthy and sustainable future

Plant science decadal vision 2020–2030: Reimagining the potential of plants for a healthy and sustainable future

A Science-Informed Ethics for Agricultural Biotechnology

Plant Co-expression Annotation Resource: a webserver for identifying targets for genetically modified crop breeding pipelines

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