“It has been known for some years that a DNA sequence used to turn genes on and off (a gene switch) in some GM plants also forms the tail end of a virus gene in the Cauliflower mosaic virus. This naturally occurring plant virus is ubiquitous in plants and derived foods, both GM and non-GM, and does not pose safety concerns to human and animal health.”posted by yoink at 2:11 PM on January 25 [12 favorites]
“In the light of recent advances in the understanding of how this gene behaves when it occurs within a virus, we did a comprehensive risk assessment of the part of the Cauliflower mosaic virus used as a gene switch. We were looking at how the presence of part of this viral gene may affect the physiology of the GM plants. We studied the variants of the gene switch that are introduced in GM plants and the conditions under which this gene segment could be turned on to produce a viral protein fragment, in detail. No risks to human health were identified when this gene was present in GM plants
Among the affected transgenic events are some of the most widely grown GMOs, including Roundup Ready soybeans (40-3-2) and MON810 maize. They include the controversial NK603 maize recently reported as causing tumors in rats (Seralini et al. 2012).Never mind that the study was profoundly underpowered. Never mind that the rats used in the study were *bred* to grow tumors. Never mind that the scientists who published the study made reporters sign an agreement that their newspapers wouldn't consult outside researchers for comment prior to publishing stories on the research. Let's focus instead on how this article presented the research:
the controversial NK603 maize recently reported as causing tumors in ratsMethodologically abysmal as the Seralini paper is, it comes nowhere near to proving any kind of causal relationship. Latham and Wilson are deliberately misquoting already bad science.
Consider the humble clothes dryer and air conditioners. These two devices consume a significant portion of household electric bills and contribute significantly to global warming. These twin technologies are actually killing the planet. Their risks are quantifiable and known. Yet we focus on the much smaller and more theoretical risks from GMO crops, mostly because the technology seems less familiar.
Possible consequences of the overlap between the CaMV 35S promoter regions in plant transformation vectors used and the viral gene VI in transgenic plants (PDF)I love bioinformatics papers, well at least the good ones, but even people in the sciences often don't feel the same way. Even the good ones have trouble getting published, but there are good reasons this paper was published in a really low powered journal. In addition to being riddled with, relatively meaningless, editing errors and written in a really annoyingly confusing way (Pro-tip: just ignore the text and look at figure 1), what they found is pretty trivial and almost certainly at least was known by the people who made this vector decades ago to be slowly forgotten as trivial knowledge. I mean, its kind of interesting that they found that these overlapping ORFs, and that they presumably weren't in the literature somewhere (assuming they actually aren't), but the whole paper is little more than a vehicle for the clumsy flowchart in figure two. That flowchart may have some meaning to a commercial technician or academic grad student somewhere trying to troubleshoot their expression vectors but doesn't really have meaningful safety implications.
Multiple variants of the Cauliflower mosaic virus 35s promoter (p35s) are used to drive the expression of transgenes in genetically modified plants, for both research purposes and commercial applications. The genetic organization of the densely packed genome of this virus results in sequence overlap between p35s and viral gene VI, encoding the multifunctional p6 protein. The present paper investigates whether introduction of p35s variants by genetic transformation is likely to result in the expression of functional domains of the p6 protein and in potential impacts in transgenic plants. A bioinformatic analysis was performed to assess the safety for human and animal health of putative translation products of gene VI overlapping p35s. No relevant similarity was identified between the putative peptides and known allergens and toxins, using different databases. From a literature study it became clear that long variants of the p35s do contain an open reading frame, when expressed, might result in unintended phenotypic changes. A flowchart is proposed to evaluate possible unintended effects in plant transformants, based on the DNA sequence actually introduced and on the plant phenotype, taking into account the known effects of ectopically expressed p6 domains in model plants.
I think the lust to convince people products/technologies are safe comes more frequently from businesses seeking money (or even well intentioned scientists/entrepreneurs wanting to make the world better FAST)... and that quite frequently scientists have been wrong in claiming their products are safe.xarnop went on to support increased scientific literacy generally, as one way to address this issue. For the rest of us:
I think people who don't understand the science well are even more wise to have a "better safe than sorry" attitude about products marketed as "safe" that are new to the human body.
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posted by Increase at 2:01 PM on January 25 [3 favorites]