Food and feed biotechnology Lectures L16.1 Nutritional safety of the second generation of transgenic plants — health enhancing characteristics and unintended effect of transgenesis

Transgenic plants of the so-called second generation (GM2), with improved chemical composition, seem to be attractive components of feeds and foods. Their utilization in animal nutrition may positively affect health state, productivity and welfare, modify quality of animal-origin products, make the storage and processing of raw materials easier and contribute to limitation of N and P emission to environment. GM2 plants, constituting the component of human diet, may have the immunomodulating, detoxifying, anti-inflammatory or anticarcinogenic effect and be a source of deficit nutrients and therapeutic proteins. There exists, however, a potential risk of developing the unfavourable traits in a plant, resulting from intervention in its genome and changing its metabolism. The unintended consequences of transgenesis may be connected, inter alia, with pleiotrophic effect of DNA introduction, gene mutations, caused by transgenesis, environmental effect of the intervention site of alien DNA and its structure on the level and stability of gene expression, or may result from activities of stresses, connected with the utilized techniques of in vitro cultures. Occurrence of unintended (predictable or not) effect of transgenesis is more probable when the aim of modification is to develop the traits, determined by few genes, when modification includes genes which synthesize proteins, being crucial for metabolism and participating in regulation of many metabolic routes. The team from the Department of Animal Nutrition and Feed Science of Warsaw University of Life Sciences conducts the studies on nutritional safety of GM2 plants, generating in Polish scientific centers (SGGW, University of Wroclaw). The evaluation includes identification of the intended and unintended effects of transgenesis and their effect on the consumer. It considers a potential risk, resulting from utilization of marker genes of resistance to antibiotics in the process of modification. The change in chemical composition of the examined GMO, leading to the increase of nutritive and dietetic values and palatability, is accompanied by improvement of agrotechnical traits. Any negative effect of its application in diet on health state and metabolism of model animals was not found. The continued experiments are verification of hypothesis, assuming a health-promoting GMO effect, resulting from the increased concentration of biologically active substances L16.2