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Moderated conference on GMOs in the pipeline, hosted by the FAO Biotechnology Forum in 2012

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Tue, 6 Nov 2012 16:26:10 +0100
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This is from Didier Breyer, again.

I am happy to see that my contribution (Message 2) on selection strategies used to develop new GMOs has generated some discussion. Let me elaborate a little bit on this topic.

From a personal point of view, I tend to agree with the conclusion that there is no scientific evidence to date suggesting that antibiotic resistance marker genes (ARMGs) currently used in GM plants have been harmful for human or animal health, or have significantly contributed to the problem of clinical antibiotic resistance.

On the other hand, the reality is that several groups, including official bodies, regulators, NGOs and the industry itself have published statements indicating that the use of GM plants devoided of any ARMGs (or at least those conferring resistance to clinically relevant antibiotics) would be preferable or strongly recommended. Although this is mainly a European concern, I think it is important to know how far this concern is shared in developing countries. I therefore thank Professor Gupta (Message 3) for commenting on this and would of course appreciate any other views.

I would like also to mention that developing marker-free GM plants can be also of interest for technical reasons, for instance for GM plants with stacked genes for which several rounds of transformation are needed, or for production of GM plants devoided of any unnecessary and/or non-native DNA sequences (e.g. cisgenic plants).

I thank Dr Dubock (Message 4) for raising the Golden Rice (GR) case. This is an emblematic example of a GMO with great potential for developing countries. And I feel this is also a good case-study for the ARMG issue. Dr Dubock mentioned in his email that Golden Rice does not include a selectable marker gene. If I am not wrong this is only partly true. To my knowledge, some GR lines have been developed by co-transformation and are therefore freed from the hygromycin resistance marker gene used for the initial selection of the transformants. Other GR lines have been developed using the mannose-based Positech(r) technology from Syngenta, which is a positive selection system based on the phosphomannose isomerase (PMI) marker gene.

On the www.goldenrice.org website, I can read that Golden Rice has been developed without the use of ARMGs for public perception reasons. This might be an indication that even in developing countries, avoiding the presence of ARMGs in GM plants might be a trigger in the development of new GMOs. I would be interested also to read other views on this.

Didier Breyer, Ph.D.
Chef de travaux - Senior scientist
Biosafety and Biotechnology Unit (SBB)
Scientific Institute of Public Health
Rue Juliette Wytsmanstraat 14
1050 Brussels
Belgium
T 02 642 53 54 | F 02 642 52 92
e-mail: Didier.Breyer (at) wiv-isp.be
www.wiv-isp.be
www.biosafety.be

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information on this FAO Biotechnology Forum, see http://www.fao.org/biotech/biotech-forum/]

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