ent was vast – spanning three agriculturally relevant climate zones (4–6) covering a large range of North America. The results indicate a greater influence of environment on allergen variation, although this was dependent upon the allergen in question, suggesting that protein function is the determining factor in a “genetic versus environmental” discussion. At this point in time, it is apparent that currently one cannot simply speculate or predict how allergens will respond to either a changing genetic background or environment.
While scientifically interesting, this does not directly address the concerns of regulatory safety. The current human health safety evaluation of GM food crops involves an evaluation of endogenous allergen levels using serum IgE screening when its’ non-GM equivalent is a commonly allergenic food (e.g., soybean; Holzhauser et al., 2008; Thomas et al., 2008). Given the natural variation in levels of endogenous allergens of available non-GM food crops due to differences in: (1) the genetics of commercial varieties (Houston et al., 2010) and (2) the interactions of those varieties with the environment (i.e., temperature, moisture, nutrients, plant pathogens, insect loads; Sancho et al., 2006a,b; Goodman et al., 2008; Doerrer et al., 2010), it is evident that we are only beginning to understand the contextual importance of natural variation in allergen assessment. It is important to note that no safety associated information is gained by performing endogenous allergen comparison studies on GM soybean if the analysis isn’t compared to non-GM soybean levels (i.e., natural variability) already in the food supply. With antibody-based assays that monitor allergen expression, it is necessary to monitor each of these non-GM reference varieties along with the GM line, simply because the assays are either relative or non-specific. The AQUA™-MRM approach employed here does not have these limitations and could conceivably allow for direct monitoring of only the GM line, once sufficient reference data have been acquired and compiled in a public database for comparative purposes.
Severin E. Stevenson, Carlotta A. Woods, and Jay J. Thelen claim no conflicts of interest. Gregory Ladics, Bonnie Hong, and Xiaoxiao Kong are employed by Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont Business that makes GM crops.
We thank Kevin Wright of Pioneer Hi-Bred International for R code to produce PCA biplots.
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