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'Cisgenic' as a product designation

Nature Biotechnology volume 24, pages 1327–1329 (2006)Cite this article

To the editor:

In a correspondence in the July issue (Nat. Biotechnol. 24, 753, 2006) and a publication in EMBO Reports in August1, Henk Schouten, Frans Krens and Evert Jacobsen discuss a new category of genetically engineered (GE) crop plants known as cisgenics. A cisgenic plant is a plant that has been genetically modified using genes and regulatory elements exclusively from plants to which it can be crossed by normal breeding2,3. Because of the similarity of the introduced genes to those of the host plant, Schouten et al. argue that cisgenic plants should not be regulated as transgenic plants that contain genes from noncrossable organisms. Instead, they propose that cisgenic plants should be free of any regulation, and food derived from them should not be labeled as GE. Although the authors recognize that the same basic technology is required to make both cisgenic and transgenic plants, they state that because the introduced gene is already present in a related plant, “cisgenesis does not add an extra trait” and is therefore both safe for consumers and poses no environmental hazard. Are these conclusions valid based upon our understanding of plant GE technology or is this simply a semantic argument designed to elude regulatory oversight and food labeling?

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory, The Salk Institute, 10010 N. Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, 92037, California, USA

    David Schubert

  2. UCSD Department of Pharmacology, 9500 Gilman Drive # 0912, La Jolla, 92093-0912, California, USA

    David Williams

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Schubert, D., Williams, D. 'Cisgenic' as a product designation. Nat Biotechnol 24, 1327–1329 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1106-1327

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