Allergenicity Study of Genetically Modified Herbicide Resistant Crops (Bioinformatics Assessment)

Genetically modified herbicide resistant (GMHR) crops have seriously affected the increase of food production. GMHR events are used on >80% 160 million estimated hectares of transgenic crops grown annually across 29 countries. GMHR traits encompass five events, including two transgenes code for glyphosate resistance and insensitive 5enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS), the cp4 epsps gene from Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain CP4 that causes shikimate pathway in another manner as the process mediate by phosphoenol pyruvate (PEP) and the mutated zm-2mepsps from corn (Zea mays L.), and three transgenes code for metabolic inactivation. One gene from Ochrobactrum anthropi strain LBAA encodes for glyphosate oxidoreductase (GOX), and two genes pat and bar from Streptomyces viridochromogenes and Streptomyces hygroscopicus, respectively, encode N-acetyltransferases that inactivate the glufosinate. Bioinformatics allergenicity of CP4 epsps, zm-2mepsps, GOX, pat, and bar proteins was studied in this research. Proteins encoded by CP4 epsps, zm-2mepsps, GOX, pat, and bar genes contain 427, 455, 431, 183, 183 amino acids respectively. These sequences were aligned using the FASTA35.04 program in six allergen databases of FARRP, SDAP, ADFS, PSD, Allergome and Algpred. The sequence alignment was implemented with the allergen proteins in three matches including: the full sequence matching sequence, matching the 80 amino acids and eight amino acids. The results showed no similarity among CP4 epsps, zm-2mepsps, GOX, pat, and bar proteins in addition to allergen proteins in the full sequence matching. Matching the 80 amino acid (Domain) in the SDAP database showed three little similarities (35, 36 and 37.25) for CP4 epsps that was not confirmed in the Algpred for mapping of IgE epitopes search. Matching of 8 amino acids showed no similarity to determine the epitope potential. Therefore, we conclude that CP4 epsps, zm-2mepsps, GOX, pat and bar proteins have non-allergenic potential at bioinformatics levels.