Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
production of transgenic plants. A variation of TILLING, EcoTILLING,
has been adapted to the discovery of polymorphisms in natural popula-
tions (Comai 2004; Henikoff et al. 2004). Some SNPs may alter amino
acid sequence or truncate proteins, thereby affecting gene function and
potentially allergenicity. Polymorphisms in the open reading frame as
well as in regulatory regions of the gene were identi
ed after screening
30 accessions of
A. duranensis
available from the U.S. germplasm
collection. One variant isoform containing a polymorphism (S73T) in
the immunodominant epitope #7 showed a reduction of 56
99% in its
IgE-binding activity compared with the wild-type Ara d 2.01 (Ramos
et al. 2009). The characterization of potentially hypoallergenic protein
variants in wild germplasm can guide peanut breeding programs to
develop hypoallergenic or reduced allergenicity lines and generate
materials suitable for immunotherapy.
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D. Biosafety Issues
Major concerns about GM crops or their derived foods are related to
safety for humans and animals. The potential, but regulated, risks to
human health include toxicity, allergenicity, and negative effects on
nutrition. Several research articles on the safety assessment of GM crops
for humans and animals indicate either no alteration in the nutritional
value of the GM-derived food tested or minimal detrimental effects on
the nutritional value (Dwivedi et al. 2012 and references therein). More
speci
cally, research on GM peanuts revealed that the proximate com-
positions of the GM peanuts were within the range reported for non-GM
peanuts (Jonnala et al. 2005a,b, 2006). The GM mustard containing
β
-carotene and its non-GM counterpart, likewise, have similar response
to allergenicity, which means that GM mustard is as safe as its non-GM
counterpart regarding allergenicity (Misra et al. 2012). Furthermore, the
assessment of 20 years of research efforts (148 transgenic events that the
U.S. FDA evaluated or Japanese regulators evaluated 189 submissions,
including combined trait products) on compositional changes in geneti-
cally modi
ed crops (crop: alfalfa, cabbage, canola, corn, cotton, papaya,
pepper, potato, raspberry, rice, soybean, tomato, and wheat; trait: insect
and virus resistance; cold, drought, and herbicide tolerance; nutrient
enhancement; and expression of protease inhibitors) provides over-
whelming evidence that transgenesis is less disruptive of crop compo-
sition compared with traditional breeding, which itself has tremendous
history of safety (Herman 2013). A number of countries have put in place
biosafety laws regulating the growth of GM crops and their use in the
food chain as well as for the labeling and the traceability of GM-derived
