ژن هاي نشانگر انتخابي و جنبه هاي ايمني زيستي آنها

Selectable marker genes and their biosafety aspects

In gene transformation process, selectable marker genes allow one to select transgenic cells from non-transgenic. The majority of effective selectable marker genes are antibiotic or herbicide resistance genes. The production of transgenic plants without marker genes is preferred because of decreasing public concerns, reducing the time required and biosafety assays costs for production of transgenic plants, finally and the most importantly maximum beneficiary of transgenic technology. Release and commercialization of transgenic plants has been proved to be completely safe for human health as well as environment. These plants are even safer compared to cultivars derived from conventional breeding methods. One of the aspects of GMOs production is selectable marker genes. Good progress has been made in developing methods for the removal of selectable marker genes from genome of transgenic plants which is optimistic. However, the available methods removing markers have not been applied economically so far and there are some technical and non-technical barriers. It seems that the technical problems will be settled down in near future.