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[SANET-MG] Erythropoietin in pharm crops



Erythropoietin (or EPO) is a glycoprotein hormone It is a growth factor
hormone for erythrocyte (red blood cell) precursors in the bone marrow.
It increases the number of red blood cells in the blood. It is used to
treat anemia. It is also a banned performance enhancing drug for
athletes. In the report below the human gene does not seem to have been
adjusted in DNA code to  enhance plant production but the gene or its
product certainly affected plant growth. When pharm crops are field
tested (large plots are allowed for production purposes) the genes
frequently pollute adjacent farm crops. In the US slovenly regulators
have allowed dangerous tests being conducted in  secret. Not only will
the tests pollute food crops but they will also most likely effect crop
production in an adverse manner. On the up side, perhaps, for athletes
any erythropoeitin  found in drug tests may be ascribed to pollution
form pharm crops!


 doi:10.1007/s11248-004-2737-3
Transgenic Research
13 (6): 541-549, December 2004
Overexpression of human erythropoietin (EPO) affects plant morphologies:
retarded vegetative growth in tobacco and male sterility in tobacco and
Arabidopsis

Ban Yoon Cheon ,Hae Jin Kim ,Kyung Hee Oh ,Sung Chul Bahn,Ji Hoon Ahn
,Jang Won Choi ,Sung Han Ok ,Jung Myung Bae and Jeong Sheop Shin
Abstract

Erythropoietin (EPO) is a glycoprotein used for curing human anemia by
regulating the differentiation of erythroid progenitors and the
production of red blood cells. To examine the expression of recombinant
EPO in plants, pPEV-EP21, in which human epo cDNA under the control of
the CaMV 35S promoter, was introduced into tobacco and Arabidopsisvia
Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation. The RNA expression
level of epo in the transgenic lines was initially estimated by Northern
blot analysis. Two transgenic lines, which exhibited a high expression
level of epo mRNA determined by Northern analysis, were chosen for
Western blot analysis to examine the production of EPO proteins. Those
two lines, EP21-12 and EP21-14, revealed detectable bands on the
immunoblot. Interestingly, constitutive expression of the human epo gene
affected the morphologies in transgenic plants such that vegetative
growth of transgenic tobacco was retarded, and male sterility was
induced in transgenic tobacco and Arabidopsis

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