Metabolomic Analysis Of29Soybean Varieties And Establish Of Plant Seeds Molecular Characteristics Reference Database

During the recent20years, the transgenic plants are developing rapidly all overthe world. The GMOs usually have insect resistance, disease resistance, stresstolerance and also have high yield, high quality and good traits. For these advantages,the genetically modified crops are welcome by both farmers and consumers andhave a bright future in wide application. Four crops take a large part of allcommercialized GM crops, they are soybean, cotton, corn and rape. In addition,there are20other kinds of plants have their genetically modified events approved forcommercialization or in the process of commercialization. The promotion of GMOs isclosely related to both the human health and environmental safety. The securityproblem becomes so serious that limits the application of transgenic breeding in adirect way. To promote the development of transgenic plants, it’s urgent forresearchers to develop reasonable methods for GMOs safety evaluation. This paperfocuses on the safety assessment methods for GM crops basing on the principle“substantial equivalence”. Metabolomics technologies were used to do the safetyassessment for GM soybeans, and received reliable results. In addition, this studyalso proposed an idea that to establish a reference database of crop seed molecularcharacteristics, in order to provide a reference for the safety assessment for GMcrops.To prove that the “omics” is a useful tool for GM crops safety assessment, thisstudy used GTS40-3-2as samples, and the differences between GM and non-GMsoybeans on metabolites were analysis by metabolomics and proteomics methods.On the metabolomics level,29major soybean varieties in different ecological groupswere used as natural variation, and the first generation of glyphosate resistancesoybean GTS40-3-2was selected as GM sample. We operated an unbiased,non-targeted metabolic profiling analysis by GC-MS and HPLC-MS.169metaboliteswere detected in all soybean seeds. Our research showed that many metabolites hada large scan of change even in nature varieties. We also found some metabolites thatwere attribute to the classification of ecological groups. Further more, the correlation analysis between metabolites and metabolites proved some metabolites were closelyrelated. The correlation analysis between metabolites and traits also gave some clueof relationship between them.To provide as more data as possible for safety assessment of GM crops, areference database for plant seed molecular was built. It included data on seeds of4crops (rice, soybean, maize, wheat) on4levels (genome, transcriptome, proteome,metabolome). By combining data in different experiments, different cultivars, weprovide the range of nature variation. Users can compare their results with our datafor further analysis and safety assessment. Data from users can be submitted to thedatabase and make it more fulfilled and more reliable. Users can also submittedstandardized experimental data of GM crops, compare the value with otherexperiments in our database, to observe whether there is any significantly differentfrom nature varieties. In this way, they might find some support on GMO safetyassessment.It is possible for users to find some useful data in this database forproper safety assessment of GMOs.