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Comparison of the metabolome and proteome of GM and non-GM wheat: Defining substantial equivalence

Project Code: G02003;
Publication:

Lewis, J., Baker J.M., Beale, M.H. and Ward, J.L. Metabolite profiling of GM plants: the importance of robust experimental design and execution. In: Genomics for Biosafety in Plant Biotechnology (Proceedings of NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Biosafety, Bulgaria, 2003), Eds. J-P. Nap, A. Atanassov and W.J. Stiekema. IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2004, pp 47-57

31/03/2009

Rothamsted Research
Beale, M

The safety of novel foodstuffs, in particular those derived from genetically modified crops, is of public
concern. One criterion that has been put forward for assessing the safety of novel foodstuffs is that of
substantial equivalence[1-4] The principle behind this being; that if composition of the novel foodstuff
does not differ in a meaningful way from a traditional variety(s), it is safe. It is important to take into
account the natural variability in the composition of the traditional variety when making this comparison.
In the case of crops, this natural variability may be a result of a diverse range of effects (weather, soil,
location etc) whose influences are not easy to predict. For obvious reasons a major part of the analysis of
novel foodstuffs should be directed at the chemical composition of the material, comprising the
metabolites (the metabolome) and proteins (the proteome). Targeted methods of metabolite analysis have
been used to investigate the equivalence of GM and traditional foods [5,6]. These methods involve
determining the amounts of specific nutritional and anti-nutritional compounds in the GM foodstuff.
These would then be compared with the values for traditional varieties. Such approaches have the
disadvantage that any unintended/unpredicted effects produced by a genetic manipulation may not be
detected if the compounds involved are not specifically investigated. For this reason non-targeted
metabolomic and proteomic techniques are of considerable interest. In this project we have utilised fieldgrown
experimental lines of wheat that have been genetically manipulated to alter glutenin composition
and hence bread-making properties as a vehicle to develop metabolite and protein fingerprinting
technologies for substantial equivalence testing. We also demonstrate their use in a large-scale comparative
study of four GM lines and two related non-GM lines grown in field trials over three years at two different
locations.

Final Report

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