Abstract

For thousands of years, humans have been improving crops to better suit their needs. These enhancements are driven by changes in the genetic makeup of the plant. While this was initially unintentional, there has been a steady push to increase the pace and precision of crop breeding, something that has occurred alongside a growing understanding of genetics and an escalating capacity to thoroughly assess genomes at the molecular level. With the advent and rapid uptake of molecular breeding techniques, such as transgenics and genome editing over the past few decades, there has been much trepidation regarding the possibility of off-target effects derived from unanticipated mutations at loci other than those intended for alteration, and the unintended risks that this might confer. These concerns persist regardless of the fact that a growing number of studies indicate that the occurrence of off-target mutations derived from newer biotechnological breeding techniques are negligible compared to what is observed with many conventional breeding approaches, and even spontaneously from one generation to the next. Given the impending food security crisis that we are facing in the short-term, there is a critical need to implement a wide range of breeding tools as a means of meeting growing demand, withstanding climate change-related pressures, increasing nutrition, and providing environmental benefits. While food safety is clearly of the utmost importance, now is certainly not the time to prevent the use of particular breeding technologies based on unfounded doubts. Therefore, in this review, we attempt to shed light on these apprehensions by putting purported “risks” into the context of plant breeding as a whole by comparing frequencies of spontaneous mutations with those (both anticipated and unanticipated) that occur through various conventional and biotechnological breeding approaches, including transgenics and genome editing. We then consider how these changes may, or may not, translate into unanticipated risk, and discuss the current global regulatory asynchrony surrounding genome edited crops.

摘要

几千年来，人类一直在改良农作物以更好地适应他们的需求。这些增强是由植物遗传组成的变化驱动的。尽管这最初不是故意的，但一直在努力提高农作物育种的速度和精度，这是在人们对遗传学的理解不断增强以及在分子水平上全面评估基因组能力增强的同时发生的。在过去的几十年中，随着分子育种技术（例如转基因和基因组编辑）的出现和迅速普及，人们对于由除预期用于改变的位点以外的其他位点的意外突变产生脱靶效应的可能性感到非常担忧。可能带来的意外风险。无论是否有越来越多的研究表明，与许多传统育种方法相比，甚至是自发地代代相传的新生物技术育种技术产生的脱靶突变的发生都可以忽略不计，这些担忧仍然存在。 。鉴于我们短期内将要面临的粮食安全危机，迫切需要实施各种育种工具，以满足日益增长的需求，承受与气候变化有关的压力，增加营养并提供环境的手段。好处。尽管食品安全显然是最重要的，但现在绝对不是时候基于没有根据的怀疑来阻止使用特定的育种技术。因此，在这篇评论中，我们试图通过将自发突变的频率与通过各种常规和生物技术育种方法（包括转基因和基因组编辑。然后，我们考虑这些变化可能会或可能不会转变为意料之外的风险，并讨论围绕基因组编辑作物的当前全球监管异步性。