Exploration of microarrays as tools to assess substantial equivalence of genetically modified soybeans

According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Health Canada, genetically modified crops are considered safe if they are substantially equivalent to a conventional crop in regards to agronomic, physiological and compositional characteristics. A recurring issue in safety assessment of genetically modified crops is the paucity of analytical methods to detect unintended or unexpected outcomes of genetic modification. Traditional targeted compound comparative analyses are limited in scope and capacity to detect unintended changes in chemical composition. This study explored the potential of using microarray technology to assess the substantial equivalence of gene expression profiles between genetically modified and conventional soybean cultivars. Different pre processing methods were applied to the raw expression data from the arrays, and clustering methods were used to try and differentiate the genetically modified cultivars from the conventional cultivars. Results showed that more variation existed between different strains of conventional cultivars than between conventional and genetically modified cultivars.

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Cheng KC, Beaulieu J, Iquira E, Belzile FJ, Fortin MG, Strömvik MV