提高转基因植物安全性的策略

随着转基因植物商业化,转基因植物的安全性,尤其是转基因植物中的抗性标记基因,受到了越来越多的关注,因为人们担心这些抗性标记基因能够潜在地流向杂草、微生物或相关的植物并产生超级杂草、超级微生物或使一些相关的植物产生意外的性状,从而引发食品或生态安全问题。尽管这些担忧尚未有明确的科学根据,但培育无抗性标记基因的工程植株或使用安全性标记基因无疑会提高转基因植物的生物安全性,并有助于公众对转基因植物的认同和接受。为此,近年来已发展了多种提高植物转基因安全性的策略,该文即对这几种策略进行了综述和评价。

Strategies for improving the bio-safety of transgenic plants

With the commercialization of transgenic plants,consumers and environmental groups have expressed more and more concerns about the bio-safety of transgenic plants from an economical and food perspective.Most of these concerns especially focus on the presence of antibiotic-or herbicide-resistance marker genes in transgenic plants because of the premise that such marker genes could potentially result in the emergence of 'superweeds or supermicrobe' or the introduction of undesired traits into related plants.Although no scientific basis has been determined for these concerns,generating marker-free plants or using non-resistance marker genes would certainly improve the bio-safety of transgenic plants and contribute to the public acceptance of transgenic plants.To this end,several strategies for improving the bio-safety of transgenic plants have been developed recently.The latest advances on these strategies have been reviewed and evaluated in this paper.