Regulatory approaches for genome edited agricultural plants in select countries and jurisdictions around the world.

Genome editing in agriculture and food is leading to new, improved crops and other products. Depending on the regulatory approach taken in each country or region, commercialization of these crops and products may or may not require approval from the respective regulatory authorities. This paper describes the regulatory landscape governing genome edited agriculture and food products in a selection of countries and regions.

Plant-made therapeutics: an emerging platform in South Africa.

The field of plant-made therapeutics in South Africa is well established in the form of exploitation of the country's considerable natural plant diversity, both in the use of native plants in traditional herbal medicines over many centuries, and in the more modern extraction of pharmacologically-active compounds from plants, including those known to traditional healers. In recent years, this has been added to by the use of plants for the stable or transient expression of pharmaceutically-important compounds, largely protein-based biologics and vaccines. South Africa has a well-developed plant biotechnology community, as well as a comprehensive legislative framework for the regulation of the exploitation of local botanic resources, and of genetically-modified organisms.

Downregulation of pyrophosphate: D-fructose-6-phosphate 1-phosphotransferase activity in sugarcane culms enhances sucrose accumulation due to elevated hexose-phosphate levels.

Analyses of transgenic sugarcane clones with 45-95% reduced cytosolic pyrophosphate: D-fructose-6-phosphate 1-phosphotransferase (PFP, EC 2.7.1.

The reduction of starch accumulation in transgenic sugarcane cell suspension culture lines.

Starch only occurs in small amounts in sugarcane, but is, nevertheless an unwanted product because it reduces the amount of sucrose that can be crystallized from molasses. In an attempt to reduce the starch content of sugarcane, the activities of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (AGPase) and beta-amylase were manipulated using transgenic approaches. Transformation vectors to reduce AGPase activity and to increase plastidial beta-amylase activity were constructed and used for the transformation of sugarcane calli.

Molecular and kinetic characterisation of sugarcane pyrophosphate: fructose-6-phosphate 1-phosphotransferase and its possible role in the sucrose accumulation phenotype.

The amount of pyrophosphate: fructose-6-phosphate 1-phosphotransferase (PFP) activity in sugarcane internodal tissue is inversely correlated with sucrose content. To help elucidate this apparent role of PFP in sucrose accumulation in sugarcane we have determined its molecular and kinetic properties. Sugarcane PFP was purified 285-fold to a final specific activity of 4.

Downregulation of neutral invertase activity in sugarcane cell suspension cultures leads to a reduction in respiration and growth and an increase in sucrose accumulation.

Suspension cultures were used as a model system to investigate sucrose metabolism in four sugarcane (Saccharum spp. interspecific hybrids) cell lines transformed with antisense neutral invertase (NI) constructs. Throughout a 14-day growth cycle two cell lines in which the antisense sequence was under the control of a tandem CaMV-35S: maize ubiquitin promoter showed a strong reduction in NI activity, as well as reduced hexose and increased sucrose concentrations in comparison to the control line.

Down-regulation of pyrophosphate: fructose 6-phosphate 1-phosphotransferase (PFP) activity in sugarcane enhances sucrose accumulation in immature internodes.

Pyrophosphate: fructose 6-phosphate 1-phosphotransferase (PFP) activity was successfully down-regulated in sugarcane using constitutively expressed antisense and untranslatable forms of the sugarcane PFP-beta gene. In young internodal tissue activity was reduced by up to 70% while no residual activity could be detected in mature tissues. The transgenic plants showed no visible phenotype or significant differences in growth and development under greenhouse and field conditions.

Sequence analysis and transcriptional profiling of two vacuolar H+ -pyrophosphatase isoforms in Vitis vinifera.

Gene expression of grapevine vacuolar H(+)-pyrophosphatase (V-PPase EC 3.6.1.