Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Substantial equivalence (SE) is the first parameter of safety among conventional and genetic modified (GM) plant used as feed and food. Although SE is not per se an effective prove of safe modification, some other methodology are on the protocol to detect GM products, most of it are based on immunochemical reactions and PCR. Those methods are not able to detect changes on the protein expression after the modifications. Proteomic techniques are the elected methods to identify single or multiple changes on the protein contend in different tissues of a GM plant. In this work, assays with SDS-PAGE, bidimensional electrophoresis (2D), and mass spectrometry used on convectional and GM seeds of soybean and maize permitted to establish the degree of similarity on individual protein maps of each sample. It was performed the comparison between six seed samples of commercial varieties of soybeans, and five samples of maize. Landraces of maize and bio soybean was used as extra standards. The gel images were analyzed by ImageMaster 2D Platinum software provided by GE Healthcare. Parameters of matching, abundance, salience, and the number of detected spots were analyzed. The results showed high level of similarity among conventional and GM crops, but distinct if compared with bio soybeans and landraces of maize. Mass spectrometry also confirmed the identification of the main and minor spots developed by 2D. The results support the safety of the protein contendon GM and their isogenic counterpart seeds.

Biography

Flavio Finardi-Filho is an Associate Professor at Department of Food and Experimental Nutrition, at University of Sao Paulo, MSc and PhD in Food Science (University of Sao Paulo); he was Visitor Researcher at FDA - Washington, DC, Research Fellow at University of California, Davis, Associate Researcher in Plant Molecular Biology at University of California, San Diego, Research Fellow in Biotechnology at Universidad Politécnica, Madrid and Visitor Researcher at University of Nottingham, UK. His research interests are: GMO and Food Safety. She is the President of the Brazilian National Technical Commission of Biosafety - CTNBio (March, 2012-March, 2014).