ISB News Report - October 2014
http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2014/Oct14.pdf
Table of Contents
RISK ASSESSMENT RESEARCH
Characteristics and Safety Assessment of Intractable Proteins in Genetically Modified Crops
Dean Bushy
Each new transgenic trait of genetically engineered plants has been approved for planting only after a thorough safety assessment of the expressed transgenic protein. One method is to consider the protein source and make bioinformatic comparisons of its amino acid sequence to various protein databases to establish a history of safe use and to determine if it has any similarity with known mammalian toxins. While this has worked well, new GM crops may contain intractable proteins that cannot be isolated in large quantities using bacterial expression systems and also may not remain intact or active during isolation. The paper recently published by Bushey and colleagues describes some adaptations to the current methodologies.
REGULATORY NEWS
China Rejects US Corn, While an Australian Court Accepts DNA Patent Claims
Phill Jones
During November 2013, China started to refuse imports of US corn on the basis that tests showed that some cargoes of corn contained Syngenta's genetically engineered (GE) Agrisure VipteraR corn. The National Grain and Feed Association, a group that represents grain, feed, and related commercial businesses, estimated that the US corn, distillers grains, and soy sectors sustained up to $2.9 billion in economic losses following China's rejection based on VipteraR corn. These losses have ignited a debate in the agricultural industry about who must shoulder responsibility.
Myriad Decisions about Myriad's DNA Patent Claims
Once upon a time, Myriad Genetics had US patent claims to molecules with nucleotide sequences of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, two genes linked to susceptibility for breast cancer. During May 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation sued the US Patent and Trademark Office, Myriad Genetics, and Directors of the University of Utah Research Foundation, alleging the invalidity of the DNA claims. During June 2013, the Court ultimately decided that "genes and the information they encode are not patent eligible . . . simply because they have been isolated from the surrounding genetic material." In contrast, in September 2014, the Federal Court of Australia found fault with the US Supreme Court's reasoning, and wrote "properly considered is not, as the US Supreme Court considered, concerned 'primarily with the information contained in the genetic sequence [rather than] with the specific chemical composition of a particular molecule.'"
PLANT RESEARCH NEWS
Creation of High Oleic Soybean Oil via Targeted Mutagenesis of FAD2 Gene Family
Thomas Stoddard, Daniel F Voytas, Luc Mathis, and Feng Zhang
GE crops for human consumption date back 10,000 years to the advent of sedentary agriculture when humans first began selecting and breeding the most beneficial plants. Technological advances have improved breeding techniques, which have helped to reduce the time and labor involved; however, the resulting plants are nearly always transgenic. The advent of sequence-specific nucleases has allowed for accurate and precise genome engineering, reducing both the labor and time investment without requiring the integration of foreign DNA into the genome. This utility of the technology was exemplified recently with the development of a soybean line that produces high oleic acid oil and lacks any foreign DNA.
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