Team:SCAU-China/Safety
Model
Astanxanthin is becoming a more and more popular health care product, and our project is focusing on producing and accumulating astanxanthin in rice endosperm bioreactor, and, finally, getting the astanxanthin products. During our experiments, we have collected some data and used educated guesses that are biologically feasible, trying to figure out, 1.which foreign genes plays a more important role in the pathway; 2. the interplay between four foreign genes and other endogenous genes on expression level. Through these analysis, we wonder a better optimizing strategy to increase the production of astanxanthin in rice endosperm bioreactor.
1.Genes and astanxanthin production
We have transduced four foreign genes, ZmPSY, Crtl, BKT and BHY, into rice endosperm bioreactor. The enzymes they coded catalysis the following reactions:
Design for marker free
In this part, we used a site-specific Cre/loxP recombination to delete the selective marker. To delete the selective resistance gene in transgenic rice, a marker-free element was used to assemble into four-gene multigene vector. This marker-free element was placed between two loxP sites, and consists of a HPT (hygromycin) resistance gene expression cassette and a Cre gene expression cassette controlled by anther-specific promoter (Figure 4). When Cre gene was expressed in transgenic rice anther, the Cre enzyme deleted the marker-free element between two loxP sites. You can read more details, please click here!
Figure 1 The schematic diagram of the marker-free element. PV4 is an anther-specific promoter that drives Cre gene expression in anther.
Laws®ulations
The credibility of the policy about “aSTARice” transgenic rice project:
The world health organization
In 2002, the world health organization claimed in"20 questions about genetically modified food".All of the genetically modified products as so far in the international market have passed the risk assessment by the national authorities. These different assessments in general follow the same basic principles, including the environment and human health risk assessment. These assessments are transparent, they did not show any risk for human health"
The United Nations
The United Nations food and agriculture organization in 2003-2004,in "the food and agriculture condition report” clearly pointed out that the current existed modified crops and food is safe, the method used to test its safety is appropriate.So far, there is no safety accident caused by eating genetically modified crops. Millions of people eat the food derived from genetically modified crops, mainly maize, soybean and rape seed, but did not find any adverse effect.
The European
In 2009, the transgenic group of European food safety authority set out an authoritative scientific opinion about herbicide resistant and insect-resistantcrops that in terms of impact on the environment of human and animal health, gm is the same safe as non-gm, without any harm to health and the environment.
The United
In 2010, the United States national academy of sciences claimed in “the influence on American agricultural sustainability ”. In general, compared to traditional agriculturaltechnology for American farmers, genetically modified has created a huge environmental benefits and economic benefits.
The world health organization, the United Nations food and agriculture organization, the us food and drug administration and other international organizations and authorities have said the current approval of commercialization of transgenic food is safe and edible.
China:
The Chinese government attaches great importance to the management work of the safety of agricultural genetically modified organisms, has formed a set of law which is suitable for China's national situation and consistent with international convention of laws and regulations, technical regulations and management system. As a result,it has achieved remarkable resultsin accordance with the implementation of safety management.
1. The legal system: the agricultural genetically modified organisms safety management regulations, the measures for the administration of agricultural genetically modified organisms safety assessment, the safety measures for the administration of import of agricultural genetically modified organisms, the identification measures for the administration of agricultural genetically modified organisms, the agricultural genetically modified organisms processing measures for examination and approval, the inspection and quarantine measures for the administration of entry and exit of genetically modified products.
2. The administrative management system: joint inter-ministerial meeting, agricultural genetically modified organisms safety management leading group, the provincial administrative department of agriculture, municipal (county) level administrative department of agriculture.
3. Technical support system, safety evaluation, detection, monitoring and technical standards.
Lab work
Training
Members in our team have read the established laboratory safety principles of our school and the topics in our safety training can be summarized as follows:
1. Non-biological operations:
1.1 Handling toxic chemicals
1.2 Emergency measures(such as how to tackle fire, electric leakage and negligent wounds)
1.3 Instruments and facilities operation principles
2.Biological operations:
2.1 Potential threats of our engineering bacterium (Escherichia coli)
2.2 Effective protection during organism operations
2.3 Waste materials handling measures
2.4 Emission rules
Rules and Regulations
We have graduate students as our supervisors to ensure our operation correctness preventing safety problems. All of our team members have at least been working in a lab for 3 months and received biosafety training. The biosafety guidelines of our institution can be describe as follows:
1. All laboratories must be specially design and should set up strict management systems, standard operation procedures and rules.
2. Each staff should be equipped with personal safety equipment to avoid direct contact with the pathogenic microorganism or toxic chemicals.
3. New staffs should be well trained and should pass the experiment test before performing experiments themselves.
4. One person at least in each laboratory should take charge of biosafety and establish a continuous biosafety training program.
5. Laboratories should establish emergency handling procedures and have routine inspection forall of the equipment.
