Food Standards Agency
Thursday 2 July 2009
Safer food better business banner
AZ-Directory
What's NewRSS
What is RSS?Listen
Listen to this siteWednesday 16 October 2002
This research project compares GM wheat with non-GM wheat using the latest scientific methods.
Study Duration : September 2001 to January 2005
Contractor : Rothamstead Research
Wheat is the major crop in UK, EU and world agriculture. It is used to make bread, other baked goods, pasta and noodles. However, wheat flour and other ingredients derived from wheat (e.g. gluten and starch) are also widely used to confer specific properties to other food products. Genetic engineering of wheat to alter various properties such as pest resistance, herbicide resistance, plant-stature and grain quality, is well advanced. The pervasiveness of wheat in food systems means that transgenic grain is likely to be used for a wide range of products in addition to those traditionally associated with wheat. Thus, from a food-safety point of view, wheat is an important system for development of methods to assess the molecular consequences of transgenesis.
This project will apply modern proteomic and metabolomic analyses to both grain and vegetative tissue from wild-type and transgenic wheat lines available in IACR. The project comprises three phases:
1. Establishment of methods for the analysis of the metabolome and proteome of wheat grain and vegetative tissue.
2. Use of these methods to determine the variability of metabolite and protein profiles in non-GM wheat grown and stored under different conditions.
3. Application of the methods to compare 19 lines of GM wheat with non-GM wheat grown under a range of conditions in the field and in controlled environments.
Comparison of the proteomic and metabolomic data with those from transcriptome analysis of the same plant material, generated from a separate project already funded by BBSRC in IACR, will allow determination of equivalence of GM and non-GM wheat lines at all molecular levels. In this way important questions relating to the expected and unintended effects of transgene expression on the molecular composition of this important food material will be answered. It will also provide methods for routine profiling of transgenic grain and grain products, as well as providing data to allow the rigorous examination of the ‘substantial equivalence’ concept.
In this project, the researchers developed several techniques based on proteomics and metabolomics and examined their future potential in the safety assessment of genetically modified wheat.
A protocol for collection of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) metabolite fingerprints was developed for white flour and applied to samples producing a large data set of fingerprints. These were analysed and compared with results of two mass spectrometry-based fingerprinting techniques, demonstrating the compatibility of NMR in the assessment of wheat flour.
The production of 2-Dimensional protein separation images of the wheat samples that could be compared objectively was a major challenge that was overcome in this project. The development of a standard operating procedure for the method was a major output of the study and will be of value to the wider scientific community.
Proteomic and metabolomic analysis has revealed unintended effects in white flour in one out of four transgenic wheat lines, genetically engineered to have a different glutenin content, compared with their non-GM controls.
Metabolomic analysis showed that the GM line had higher sugar levels than the comparative parental line. However, the differences observed between this GM line and its parental control generally were smaller than that seen between different cultivation sites or years for any particular line whether it was GM or non-GM.
The final report is available from the FSA Information Centre.
To obtain a copy, please contact the Enquiry Desk, Information Services, Food Standards Agency (tel: 020 7276 8181/8182 or email:
library&info@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk
)
The following paper has also been published from this project:
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
Contact
:
Email
: science@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk
Find out what our other sites have to offer