Golden Rice – Potential And Outlook

 792 million

people are malnourishe d (2000)  10 million children die of malnutrition every year  2-3 million die because of VAD, 500.000 get blind  400 million poor consume mainly rice

Vitamin A importance  Vision  Epithelial growth and      

repair Bone growth Reproduction and embryonic development Maintenance of the surface linings of the eyes Epithelial integrity of respiratory, urinary and intestinal tracts Regulation of adult genes Immune response

Vitamin A production Just middle part missing in endosperm: Phytoene Synthase, Phytoene Desaturase, ZetaCarotene Desaturase

The construc t A lot of work has been done since the intitial idea...

The “best“ construct: GR II  Endosperm-specific promotor Glutelin-promotor Gt1p  transit peptide tp to target plastid  Nos-Terminator , terminating synthesis (nopaline synthase)  carotene-desaturase from Erwinia uredovora crtI,

catalyzing mutiple steps in carotenoid synthesis  Zea mays phytoene synthase  Maize ubiquitin-promotor ubi1p  phosphomannose-isomerase marker-System „Positech“,

avoiding antibiotic-marker  RB and LB: RB, T-DNA right/left border sequence

The new Golden Rice  Golden Rice up to 37

µg/g carotenoid of which 31 µg/g is βcarotene (first generation Golden Rice 1.6 µg/g )  $3.00 - 19.40 daly (costs to save one life) – from $200 cost-effective (World bank)  India: 5,000-40,000

Criticism  Golden Rice could

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contaminate wild rice forever better answers to the problem of VAD Encourages diet based on one food Designed to help introducing GMOs Unknown side-effects

Micronutrients and Bioavailablity  Micronutrients

can enhance soil quality  Various factors determine availablity  A lot of breedingpotential

Status and Outlook  Introduction to the

Philippines by 2012, then Bangladesh  Yield: about 5t - low? Storage – depends on traits Conversion factor – first experiments successfull  GR with additional nutritional traits: vitamin E, iron and zinc, highquality protein or essential amino acids

Personalized medicine  Trend of the

future: personalized diets for problematic SNPs  Nutrigenomics: Interaction of dietary components and resulting proteonomic and metabolomic changes  Nutrigenetics: Understanding Gene-based differences in response to

What should be done  Spread

biofortified food to Africa  Adopt regulatory process  Shift public opinion  Focus research and agriculture lesser on profits  Establish not only bio, but also quality

Sources 

All Slides: Salim Al-Babili and Peter Beyer, „Golden Rice – five years on the road – five years to go?“, Review: Trends in Plant Science, Vol. 10 No. 12 December 2005 Roukayatou Zimmermann, Matin Qaim: „Potential health benefits of Golden Rice – a Philippine case study“ – Food policy 29 (2004) Ross M. Welch, Robin D. Graham: „Breeding for micronutrients in staple food crops from a human nutrition perspective“, Journal of Experimental Botany, Vol. 55, No. 396 Peter Bayer et al.: „Golden Rice: Indroducing the β-Carotene Biosynthesis Pathway into Rice Endosperm by Genetic Engineering to Defeat Vitamin A Defiency“, Symposium The Journal of Nutrition, 2002 American Society for Nutritional Science The Golden Rice project – www.goldenrice.org

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Slide 3: http://www.cehjournal.org/extra/40_15_01.html , Photos: Simon Franken, Allen Foster, Donald McLaren & Gordon Johnson Alfred Sommer (ophthalmologist) http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/sommer_vitA.html

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Slide 7: DER SPIEGEL 48/2008 http://www.spiegel.de/media/0,4906,19439,00.pdf „Kampagne für gentechnisch veränderten Reis am Scheideweg“ Christoph Then, www.scouting-biotechnology.net, Januar 2009, im Auftrag von foodwatch e. V. http://www.foodwatch.de/e10/e1026/e19431/e23453/GoldenRice_deutsch_final_ger.pdf „All that glitters is not Gold: The false hope of Golden Rice“, Greenpeace, May 2005, http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/all-that-glitters-is-not-gold.pdf

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Slide 8: www.greenpeace.org

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Slide 9: http://www.goldenrice.org/Content3-Why/why3_FAQ.html

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Slide 11: Rahul Shetty MD, http://open.medicdrive.org/blog/2007/09/26/surfing-the-waves-of-medicine-two-point-oh/

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Slide 12: Google Earth, Terrametrics, DigitalGlobe Undata, www.thematicmapping.org