Safety Assessment and Metabolic Fingerprinting of GMO Gerberas

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have raised concerns in general public and involve also subjects of scientific interest, as it is still not exactly known how single genes brought about by means of genetic engineering affect other genes and thus the metabolism of the plant. In this work, effects of 228 GMO Gerbera hybrida lines and 42 traditional gerbera varieties on human gastrointestinal epithelium Caco-2, bronchial epithelium Calu-3 and hepatocellular Huh-7 cell lines were assessed using WST-1 cell viability assay [1]. After collection, the inflorescence gerbera samples were freeze-dried, ground and extracted with methanol. The cell viability assays were performed in automated environment by exposing the cell cultures to 40µg/mL and 100µg/mL extracts for 24 hours. <80% and >120% threshold values were set to mark significant effects on cell viability. The statistical analysis of the frequencies of hit extracts found no differences between GMO and non-GMO lines in any of the cell lines used. In addition to the cell viability testing, the metabolic fingerprinting of the extracts was performed with TLC. The principal component analysis did not separate GMO lines from non-GMO lines, whereas the nearest neighbour classifier method found the right neighbour in 46.3% of samples when 42 different transgenic groups were formed. These results indicate that even though some metabolic differences between traditional and GMO gerbera lines may exist, these differences seem not to affect human cell viability in vitro.

Reference: 1. Ishiyama, M. (1995), In Vitro Toxicol. 8:187–190.