Are Genetically Modified Plants reclaimable and Safe?
Jacques-Henry Weil
Institut de Biologie Moleculaire des Plantes, Strasbourg, France
Summary
So far, plants have been cistrontically modified essentially to
achieve resistance to weedkillers, or to pathogens (mainly insects, or
viruses), but resistance to abiotic stresses (such as cold, heat,
drought, or salt) is also being studied. Genetically modified (GM)
plants with improved nutritional qualities have much recently been
developed, such as plants containing higher proportions of
unsaturated oleaginous acids (omega-3 and omega-6) in their oil (to
prevent cardio-vascular diseases), or containing b-carotene as in the
golden rice (to prevent vitamin A deficiency). Possible risks for
human health (such as the production of allergenic proteins), or for
the milieu (such as the appearance of superweeds as a result
from gene flow), should be carefully studied, and a science-based
assessment of benefits vs. risks should be do on a csae by case
basis, both for GM plants and for plants obtained by conventional
breeding methods.
IUBMB Life, 57: 311 314, 2005
Keywords GM plants; herbicide resistance; pathogen resistance;
abiotic stress; Bt; golden rice; bcarotene; molecular
farming; antibiotic resistance; allergenic proteins; gene
flow
Applications of transmitted engineering to medicine, which
have allowed the production of a number of proteins of
remediation importance (such as insulin, growth hormone,
plasminogen activator, antihaemophilic factors, etc.) in large
amounts and without taint by viruses or prions,
have generally been well accepted. This is non always the case,
at least in some countries, for the applications of transmissible
engineering to agronomy.
Genetically modified plants (GM plants) or transgenic
plants are usually obtained either by direct gene transfer (with
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