Tracking of GMOs through bioluminescent technology

New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biotechnology has shown that products from GM crops can be identified at low concentration by using bioluminescent real time reporter technology and loop mediated isothermal amplification, Science Daily reports. With the combination of these techniques it was possible to recognise 0.1 % GM contamination of maize, far below the current limit of 0.9 % in the EU.
 

The most common technique for detecting GM contamination is polymerase chain reaction, which however involves complex extraction procedures and rapid thermo-cycling. Both require specific equipment. To overcome these problems, scientists assessed whether they could use loop mediated isothermal amplification to amplify DNA at a constant temperature and use bioluminescent real time reporter to identify GM-specific DNA in real time.

Compared to polymerase chain reaction, this method is more tolerant of contaminating polysaccharides, meaning that the DNA clean-up process does not need to be as thorough. It requires only basic equipment for DNA extraction and a constant temperature for DNA amplification and detection. More information is available here.