Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T17:34:16.597Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Editorial. Transgene containment by molecular means - is it possible and cost effective?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2003

Bao-Rong Lu
Bao-Rong Lu*
Affiliation:
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Biodiversity and Ecological Engineering, Institute of Biodiversity Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China
*
brlu@fudan.edu.cn

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

With the rapid advancement of transgenic biotechnology, large numbers of transgenic crops have been produced and released for commercial cultivation (James, 2001), raising considerable biosafety concerns all over the world. One of the major issues is the potential ecological risk resulting from transgenes escaping into and persist- ing in the environment. The extensive on-going debate on this issue (Arriola, 1997; Wolfenbarger and Phifer, 2000; Crawley et al., 2001; Prakash, 2001; Dale et al., 2002) poses challenging questions regarding the research direc- tions that need to be taken to ensure that biotechnology outputs are responsibly deployed worldwide. Unless these biosafety issues are satisfactorily addressed, large-scale commercial release of the transgenic crops developed and further advancement of transgenic bio- technology are likely to be hampered. For an in-depth review of crop-to-wild gene flow, see Jenczewski et al. (2002) in this number of EBR. Here the more specific issue of the effectiveness of preventing gene flow from occurring will be discussed.

Type
Editorial
Information
Environmental Biosafety Research , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , January 2003 , pp. 3 - 8
Copyright
© ISBR, EDP Sciences, 2003

References

Arriola, PE (1997) Risks of escape and spread of engineered genes from transgenic crops to wild relatives. AgBiotech News Inform. 9: 157-160
Arriola PE, Ellstrand NC (1996) Crop-to-weed gene flow in the genus Sorghum (Poaceae): Spontaneous interspecific hybridization between johnsongrass, Sorghum halepense, and crop sorghum, S. bicolor. Am. J. Bot. 83: 1153-1159
Boudry, P, Mörchen, M, Saumitou-Laprade, P, Vernet, P, Van Dijk, H (1993) The origin and evolution of weed beets: consequences for the breeding and release of herbicide- resistant transgenic sugar beets. Theor. Appl. Genet. 87: 471-478 CrossRef
Crawley, MJ, Brown, SL, Hails, RS, Kohn, DD, Rees, M (2001) Biotechnology - Transgenic crops in natural habitats. Nature 409: 682-683 CrossRef
Dale, PJ (1994) The impact of hybrids between genetically modified crop plants and their related species: general considerations. Mol. Ecol. 3: 31-36 CrossRef
Dale, PJ, Clarke, B, Fontes, EMG (2002) Potential for the environmental impact of transgenic crops. Nat. Biotechnol. 20: 567-574 CrossRef
Daniell, H (2002) Molecular strategies for gene containment in transgenic crops. Nat. Biotechnol. 20: 581-586 CrossRef
Daniell, H, Khan, MS, Allison, L (2001a) Milestones in chloroplast genetic engineering: an environmentally friendly era in biotechnology. Trends Plant Sci. 7: 84-91 CrossRef
Daniell, H, Muthukumar, B, Lee, SB (2001b) Engineering the chloroplast genome without antibiotic selection. Curr. Genet. 39: 109-116 CrossRef
Daniell, H, Datta, R, Varma, S, Gray, S, Lee, SB (1998) Containment of herbicide resistance through genetic engineering of the chloroplast genome. Nat. Biotechnol. 16: 345-348 CrossRef
Dvorak, J (1972) Genetic variability in Aegilops speltoides affecting homoelogous pairing in wheat. Can. J. Genet. Cytol. 14: 371-380 CrossRef
Eastham K, Sweet J (2002) Genetically modified organisms (GMOs): the significance of gene flow through pollen transfer. Environmental Issue Report 28 (European Evironmental Agency, Copenhagen, Denmark
Ellstrand, NC (2001) When transgenes wander, should we worry? Plant Physiol. 125: 1543-1545 CrossRef
Ellstrand, NC, Hoffman, CA (1990) Hybridization as an avenue of escape for engineered genes. Bioscience 40: 438-442 CrossRef
Ellstrand, NC, Prentice, HC, Hancock, JF (1999) Gene flow and introgression from domesticated plants into their wild relatives. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 30: 539-563 CrossRef
Gressel, J (1999) Tandem constructs: preventing the rise of superweeds. Trends Biotechnol. 17: 361-366 CrossRef
Hall, L, Topinka, K, Huffman, J, Vavis, L (2000) Pollen flow between herbicide-resistant Brassica napus is the cause of multiply-resistant B. napus volunteers. Weed Sci. 48: 688-694 CrossRef
James C (2001) Global review of commercialized transgenic crops: 2001. ISAAA Briefs No. 24: Preview. Ithaca, NY. http://www.isaaa.org/publications
Jenczewski, E, Ronfort, J, Chèvre, AM (2002) Crop-to-wild gene flow, introgression and possible fitness effects of transgenes. Environ. Biosafety Res. 2: 9-24 CrossRef
Kimber G (1983) Genomic analysis in the genus Triticum. In Sakamoto S, ed, Proc. 6th Intern. Wheat Genet. Symp., Kyoto, Japan, Kyoto University, pp 23-28
Klinger, T, Arriola, PE, Ellstrand, NC (1992) Crop-Weed hybridization in Radish (Raphanus sativus): effects of distance and population size. Am. J. Bot. 79: 1431-1435 CrossRef
Knott, DR (1989) The effect of transfer of alien genes for rust resistance on the agronomic and quality characteristics of wheat. Euphytica 44: 65-72 CrossRef
Langevin, SA, Clay, K, Grace, JB (1990) The incidence and effects of hybridization between cultivated rice and its related weed red rice (Oryza sativa L). Evolution 44: 1000-1008 CrossRef
Lu BR, Salomon B, Bothmer R von (1991) Meiotic studies of the progenies from intergeneric crosses Elymus × Hordeum and Elymus × Secale. Genome 33: 425-432
Lu BR, Naredo MBE, Juliano AB, Jackson MT (2000) Preliminary studies on taxonomy and biosystematics of the AA genome of Oryza species (Poaceae). In Jacobs SWL, Everett J, eds, Grasses: Systematics and Evolution, pp 51-58
Lu, BR, Song, ZP, Chen, JK (2003) Can transgenic rice cause ecological risks through transgene escape? Prog. Nat. Sci. 13: 17-24
Messeguer, J, Fogher, C, Guiderdoni, E, Marfa, V, Catala, MM, Baldi, G, Mele, E (2001) Filed assessment of gene flow from transgenic to cultivated rices (Oryza sativa L.) using a herbicide resistance genes as tracer marker. Theor. Appl. Genet. 103: 1151-1159 CrossRef
Odell, JT, Hoopes, JL, Vermerris, W (1994) Seed-specific gene activation mediated by the Cre/lox site-specific recombination system. Plant Physiol. 106: 447-458 CrossRef
Okamoto, M (1957) Asynaptic effect of chromosome V. Wheat Info. Serv. 5: 6
Prakash, CS (2001) The genetically modified crop debate in the context of agricultural evolution. Plant Physiol. 126: 8-5 CrossRef
Rieger, MA, Potter, TD, Preston, C, Powles, SB (2001) Hybridisation between Brassica napus L. and Raphanus raphanistrum L. under agronomic field conditions. Theor. Appl. Genet. 103: 555-560 CrossRef
Rieger, MA, Lamond, M, Preston, C, Powles, SB, Roush, RT (2002) Pollen-mediated movement of herbicide resistance between commercial canola fields. Science 296: 2386-2388 CrossRef
Sears ER (1983) The transfer to wheat of interstitial segments of alien chromosomes. In Sakamoto S, ed, Proc. 6th Intern. Wheat Genet. Symp., Kyoto, Japan, Kyoto University, pp 5-12
Snow, A (2002) Transgenic crops - why gene flow matters. Nat. Biotechnol. 20: 542 CrossRef
Wolfenbarger, LL, Phifer, PR (2000) The ecological risks and benefits of genetically engineered plants. Science 290: 2088-2093 CrossRef