Advancements in ‐omics techniques provide powerful tools to assess the potential effects in composition of a plant at the RNA, protein and metabolite levels. These technologies can thus be deployed to assess whether genetic engineering (GE) causes changes in plants that go beyond the changes introduced by conventional plant breeding. Here, we compare the extent of transcriptome and metabolome modification occurring in leaves of four GE rice lines expressing Bacillus thuringiensis genes developed by GE and seven rice lines developed by conventional cross‐breeding. The results showed that both types of crop breeding methods can bring changes at transcriptomic and metabolic levels, but the differences were comparable between the two methods, and were less than those between conventional non‐GE lines were. Metabolome profiling analysis found several new metabolites in GE rice lines when compared with the closest non‐GE parental lines, but these compounds were also found in several of the conventionally bred rice lines. Functional analyses suggest that the differentially expressed genes and metabolites caused by both GE and conventional cross‐breeding do not involve detrimental metabolic pathways. The study successfully employed RNA‐sequencing and high‐performance liquid chromatography mass spectrometry technology to assess the unintended changes in new rice varieties, and the results suggest that GE does not cause unintended effects that go beyond conventional cross‐breeding in rice.

中文翻译：

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相对于常规杂交，涉及基因工程的植物育种不会在水稻中产生不可接受的意外影响。

组学技术的进步提供了强大的工具，可以评估RNA，蛋白质和代谢产物水平对植物组成的潜在影响。因此，可以利用这些技术来评估基因工程（GE）是否会导致植物变化，使其超出常规植物育种所带来的变化。在这里，我们比较了表达苏云金芽孢杆菌的四个GE水稻品系叶片中转录组和代谢组修饰的程度由GE开发的基因和通过常规杂交开发的7个水稻系。结果表明，两种农作物育种方法都可以在转录组和代谢水平上产生变化，但是两种方法之间的差异是可比的，并且小于常规非GE品系之间的差异。与最接近的非GE亲本系相比，代谢组谱分析发现了GE水稻系中有几种新的代谢物，但是在一些常规育种的水稻系中也发现了这些化合物。功能分析表明，由GE和常规杂交引起的差异表达基因和代谢产物不涉及有害的代谢途径。