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Establishing Substantial Equivalence: Transcriptomics

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Transgenic Wheat, Barley and Oats

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology™ ((MIMB,volume 478))

Abstract

Regulatory authorities in Western Europe require transgenic crops to be substantially equivalent to conventionally bred forms if they are to be approved for commercial production. One way to establish substantial equivalence is to compare the transcript profiles of developing grain and other tissues of transgenic and conventionally bred lines, in order to identify any unintended effects of the transformation process. We present detailed protocols for transcriptomic comparisons of developing wheat grain and leaf material, and illustrate their use by reference to our own studies of lines transformed to express additional gluten protein genes controlled by their own endosperm-specific promoters. The results show that the transgenes present in these lines (which included those encoding marker genes) did not have any significant unpredicted effects on the expression of endogenous genes and that the transgenic plants were therefore substantially equivalent to the corresponding parental lines.

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Acknowledgements

Rothamsted Research receives grant-aided support from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council of the UK. The transcriptomic studies were supported by a grant under the BBSRC, Gene Flow Initiative (ref. GM 14152). The authors would like to thank Mr. Adrian Price at Rothamsted Research for discussions of methods for microarray data analysis. We also acknowledge our colleagues Prof. Michael Holdsworth (University of Nottingham), Prof. Keith Edwards (University of Bristol), Ms. Rebecca Lyons, and Dr. Gabriela M. Pastori (Rothamsted Research).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Crop Genetic Improvement, Department of Plant Sciences, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, UK

    María Marcela Baudo*, Rowan A. C. Mitchell & Peter R. Shewry

  2. Centre for Mathematical and Computational Biology, Department of Biomathematics and Bioinformatics, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, UK

    Stephen J. Powers

Authors
  1. María Marcela Baudo*
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  2. Stephen J. Powers
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  3. Rowan A. C. Mitchell
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  4. Peter R. Shewry
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    © 2009 Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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    Baudo*, M., Powers, S., Mitchell, R., Shewry, P. (2009). Establishing Substantial Equivalence: Transcriptomics. In: Jones, H., Shewry, P. (eds) Transgenic Wheat, Barley and Oats. Methods in Molecular Biology™, vol 478. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-379-0_15

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-379-0_15

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    • Publisher Name: Humana Press

    • Print ISBN: 978-1-58829-961-1

    • Online ISBN: 978-1-59745-379-0

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