It has been argued that the application of metabolomics to gene‐edited crops would present value in three areas: (i) the detection of gene‐edited crops; (ii) the characterization of unexpected changes that might affect safety; and (iii) building on the track record of rigorous government regulation in supporting consumer acceptance of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Here, we offer a different perspective, relative to each of these areas: (i) metabolomics is unable to differentiate whether a mutation has resulted from gene editing or from traditional breeding techniques; (ii) it is risk‐disproportionate to apply metabolomics for regulatory purposes to search for possible compositional differences within crops developed using the least likely technique to generate unexpected compositional changes; and (iii) onerous regulations for genetically engineered crops have only contributed to unwarranted public fears, and repeating this approach for gene‐edited crops is unlikely to result in a different outcome. It is also suggested that article proposing the utility of specific analytical techniques to support risk assessment would benefit from the input of scientists with subject matter expertise in risk assessment.

中文翻译：

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基因编辑作物的强制性代谢组学分析风险不相称。

有人认为，代谢组学在基因编辑作物中的应用将在三个领域产生价值：（i）基因编辑作物的检测；（ii）表征可能影响安全的意外变化；（iii）建立在政府严格的监管记录上，以支持消费者接受转基因生物。在此，相对于这些领域，我们提供了不同的观点：（i）代谢组学无法区分基因编辑还是传统育种技术导致的突变；（ii）将代谢组学用于监管目的在使用最不可能的技术产生不可预期的成分变化的农作物中寻找可能的成分差异是风险不成比例的; （iii）对转基因作物的繁重规定仅助长了公众的不安，而对基因编辑作物重复这种方法不太可能导致不同的结果。还建议，建议使用特定分析技术来支持风险评估的文章将受益于具有风险评估主题专长的科学家的投入。