New Study Refutes Absorption of Genetic Material from Ingested Food

A new study by researchers at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has shown that genetic material from food ingested by mammals would unlikely get into their bloodstream, refuting earlier provocative findings.

The new findings published in the journal RNA Biology contradict an earlier study by a team of Chinese researchers reporting that plant genetic material, specifically microRNA molecules, could get into animals' bloodstream and organ tissues after food ingestion and subsequently knock down the animals' own genes. These earlier findings have led to speculation that genetically modified (GM) foods might in turn affect gene expression among consumers and transform them in unpredictable ways, which somehow became popular among critics of plant biotechnology.

The Johns Hopkins group analyzed blood samples from pigtailed macaque (medium sized monkeys) subjects fed with substance containing soy and fruit material. They used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique to amplify the concentration of the genetic material in the samples. The researchers found highly variable readings and that the microRNA levels in samples taken before and after the macaques ingested the food material were just the same, indicating that the plant microRNA was unlikely present in the samples. Further tests using the more powerful technique of droplet digital PCR to analyze tens or hundreds of thousands of reactions at the same time confirmed that what was observed was not the targeted plant microRNAs, but most likely fragments of the macaques' own genetic material that were identical to the targeted segments.

Read the full research article at: http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/rnabiology/article/25246/.

The Johns Hopkins' news release on this study is available at http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/hold_the_medicinal_lettuce.