Abstract
Biotechnology policies and regulations must be revised and updated to reflect the most recent advances in plant-breeding technology. New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBT) such as gene editing have been applied to address the myriad of challenges in plant breeding, while the use of NPBT as emerging biotechnological tools raises legal and ethical concerns. This study aims to highlight how gene editing is operationalized in the existing literature and examine the critical issues of ethical and legal issues of gene editing for plant breeding. We carried out a systematic literature review (SLR) to provide the current states of ethical and legal discourses surrounding this topic. We also identified critical research priority areas and policy gaps that must be addressed when designing the future governance of gene editing in plant breeding.
摘要
生物技术的政策和法规必须不断修订和更新, 以适应最新的植物育种技术进展。如基因编辑这样的新植物育种技术(NPBT), 已被应用于解决植物育种中的各种难题, 但同时, 将NPBT作为新兴生物技术工具也引起了一系列的法律和伦理问题。本研究旨在突出基因编辑技术在现有文献中的实施情况, 并研究基因编辑技术在植物育种中面临的道德和伦理问题。我们进行了系统性文献综述(SLR), 以提供围绕此主题的伦理和法律论述的现状。我们还确定了在涉及基因编辑技术在植物育种中的未来治理时必须解决的关键研究优先领域和政策空白。
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) Malaysia under the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (No. FRGS/1/2021/SS0/UM/02/6) and the Universiti Malaya Research University Grant (No. RU004A-2020).
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Siti Hafsyah IDRIS: conceptualization, formal analysis, validation, writing–original draft, and writing–review & editing. Nurzatil Sharleeza MAT JALALUDDIN: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, methodology, project administration, validation, writing–original draft, and writing–review & editing. Lee Wei CHANG: formal analysis, validation, writing–original draft, and writing–review & editing. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
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Siti Hafsyah IDRIS, Nurzatil Sharleeza MAT JALALUDDIN, and Lee Wei CHANG declare that they have no conflict of interest.
This review does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.
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Idris, S.H., Mat Jalaluddin, N.S. & Chang, L.W. Ethical and legal implications of gene editing in plant breeding: a systematic literature review. J. Zhejiang Univ. Sci. B 24, 1093–1105 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.B2200601
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.B2200601
Key words
- Systematic literature review
- Gene editing
- Plant breeding
- Ethical and legal issues
- Consequentialism
- Virtue ethics principles