Maize gene expression and nitrogen fertilization

Citation:

Coll A, Nadal A, Collado R, Capellades G, Kubista M, Messeguer J, Pla M. Natural variation explains most transcriptomic changes among maize plants of  MON810 and comparable non-GM varieties subjected to two N-fertilization  farming practices. Plant Mol Biol. 2010 Jun;73(3):349-62. Epub 2010 Mar 27. PMID 20349115

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Funding Summary

This work was financially supported by the Spanish MEC project with ref. AGL2007-65903/AGR. AC received a studentship from the Generalitat de Catalunya (2005FI 00144).

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Abstract

The introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in many   countries follows strict regulations to ensure that only safety-tested   products are marketed. Over the last few years, targeted approaches have   been complemented by profiling methods to assess possible unintended   effects of transformation. Here we used a commercial (Affymertix)   microarray platform (i.e. allowing assessing the expression of   approximately 1/3 of the genes of maize) to evaluate transcriptional   differences between commercial MON810 GM maize and non-transgenic crops   in real agricultural conditions, in a region where about 70% of the   maize grown was MON810. To consider natural variation in gene expression   in relation to biotech plants we took two common MON810/non-GM variety   pairs as examples, and two farming practices (conventional and   low-nitrogen fertilization). MON810 and comparable non-GM varieties   grown in the field have very low numbers of sequences with differential   expression, and their identity differs among varieties. Furthermore, we   show that the differences between a given MON810 variety and the  non-GM  counterpart do not appear to depend to any major extent on the  assayed  cultural conditions, even though these differences may slightly  vary  between the conditions. In our study, natural variation explained  most  of the variability in gene expression among the samples. Up to  37.4% was  dependent upon the variety (obtained by conventional  breeding) and  31.9% a result of the fertilization treatment. In  contrast, the MON810  GM character had a very minor effect (9.7%) on  gene expression in the  analyzed varieties and conditions, even though  similar cryIA(b)  expression levels were detected in the two MON810  varieties and nitrogen  treatments. This indicates that transcriptional  differences of  conventionally-bred varieties and under different  environmental  conditions should be taken into account in safety  assessment studies of  GM plants.