Assessment of Genetically Modified Soybean in Relation to Natural Variation in the Soybean Seed Metabolome

Abstract

Genetically modified (GM) crops currently constitute a significant and growing part of agriculture.An important aspect of GM crop adoption is to demonstrate safety; identifying differences in end points with respect to conventional crops is a part of the safety assessment process [corrected]. Untargeted metabolomics has the ability to profile diverse classes of metabolites and thus could be an adjunct for identification of differences between the GM crop and its conventional counterpart [corrected].To account for environmental effects and introgression of GM traits into diverse genetic backgrounds, we propose that the assessment for GM crop metabolic composition should be understood within the context of the natural variation for the crop. Using a non-targeted metabolomics platform, we profiled 169 metabolites and established their dynamic ranges from the seeds of 49 conventional soybean lines representing the current commercial genetic diversity. We further demonstrated that the metabolome of a GM line had no significant deviation from natural variation within the soybean metabolome, with the exception of changes in the targeted engineered pathway.