Biotech Updates

Pollen Allergic Risk Assessment of GM Pepper and GM Chinese Cabbage

May 11, 2012

Scientist Dae-Yul Son of Daegu Haany University and colleagues assessed the allergic risk of pollens coming from genetically modified (GM) pepper with resistance to cucumber mosaic virus and GM Chinese cabbage with high phenylethylisothiocyanate (PEITC) content. They compared the amino acid (AA) sequences of the inserted gene products of GM pepper and GM Chinese cabbage with those of known allergens.

Results showed that there were no gene products that had similar sequence with the known allergens Analysis of protein gels showed that that the protein patterns of the GM pepper and GM Chinese cabbage is similar with those of the non-GM counterparts. Pollen allergic patients showed the same reactivity to GM and non-GM pepper and Chinese cabbage.

Based on the findings, the researchers concluded that pollens from the GM pepper and Chinese cabbage have no difference with the non-GM counterparts in terms of protein composition and allergenicity.

Read the research article at http://www.springerlink.com/content/t14262021m557104/.