Biosafety Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Biosafety is a set of actions focused on preventing, minimizing and eliminating risks associated with research, production, teaching, use, technology development and services related to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) with the aims of protecting human and animal health and environmental preservation.
Transgenic organisms, or GMOs, are organisms in which genetic material has been altered by recombinant DNA technology. Biotechnology allows the insertion of one or more genes into the genome of an organism from a different organism or species (e.g., animals, plants, viruses, bacteria); the expression of the introduced gene results in a new feature in the phenotype of the modified organism. A shortened definition of genes is that they are DNA sequences that contain the necessary information to affect phenotypic expression in an
organism, such as the shape of a seed or resistance to a specific pest. The information encoded by the gene is expressed through two principal steps: transcription, in which the coding region of the DNA is copied into single-stranded RNA; and translation, in which the amino acid sequence encoded by mRNA is assembled and translated into protein. Thus, for
the creation of a GMO, it is necessary to introduce the gene responsible for a particular trait into the genome of the target organism through recombinant DNA techniques.
Several products derived from recombinant DNA technology are commercially available worldwide. GMO products already on the market include human insulin, somatropin and transgenic varieties of crops, such as maize, soybeans, cotton and common beans. The United States, Brazil and Argentina are among the principal countries engaged in the
commercial production and marketing of GMOs (James, 2010).
The emergence of genetic engineering in the early 1970s in California, USA, with the isolation, introduction, and expression of the insulin gene in Escherichia coli provoked a strong reaction from the scientific community all over the world, which led to the Asilomar Conference in 1974. At that time, the scientific community proposed a moratorium on
genetic engineering. They argued that rules and safeguards should be established to ensure Transgenic Plants – Advances and Limitations
428 the use of genetic e ngineering techniques without risking human life and the environment.
In a relatively short period of time, biosafety regulations were developed for the appropriate use of these technologies in the laboratory. After over 35 years of research on and commercial use of biotechnology, there have yet to be any reports about the adverse effects of the use of genetic engineering on human and animal health or the environment.
Therefore, to ensure the appropriate generation and utilization of this technology, biosafety regulations and monitoring mechanisms have been developed in different countries around the world. Several field tests with transgenic varieties have been performed in the USA,
Argentina, Bolivia and Chile since 1991. However, in Brazil, these tests only began in 1997.