We do excludes it more says Jean Masson

The vintage beat full in Alsace and the wine will be it seems good. At the edge of Colmar, researchers at the national Institute of agronomic research (Inra) up to harvest their 13 hectares. A single square escaped the pruner. It has only 10 ares but it is the star of the Institute. Rootstocks 50 test a transgene against so-called disease "-leaf", caused by a virus that is devastating the vineyards. This field of public research of GMOs is the last remaining in France, with the testing of transgenic poplar near Orléans ("Les Echos" of January 24, 2008). Parcel quietly celebrates its three year anniversary. "The year is going to be stressful, because testing has been authorized by the State for four years, but it will be perhaps sheared off next year", is concerned about Jean Masson, Director of the centre.

Olivier Lemaire, the head of the project, opens the padlock of the high fence that isolates the 1,600 feet from the square of vine, the first curtain of many precautionary levels. Expected to see the vines torn-leaf, it appears in full form. No difference is evident between the central square of 50 transgenic feet and the other (unprotected) witnesses feet purchased off the shelf that surround them. "Make no mistake, ensures the researcher, the Earth is much infested nematodes, 70 of the witnesses feet are affected", promises Jean Masson, ahead of some criticism.

An additional year

Marc Fellous, Chairman of the Biomolecular Engineering Commission, had recently deplored the difficulties of the experiment, it supports yet in public: "They had to so protect their plot that diseases that they expected to test the resistance have been slow to come." At the national research agency that participates in the project, it confirms that because of the isolation of the Earth by a tarpaulin the number of nematodes in the plot is still insufficient. The study asked an extra year to make the scientific assessment.

Researchers from Colmar to correctly recognize that it is too early to detect symptoms of the disease of short-leaf as the distortion of the leaves. Olivier Lemaire showed a few signs but nothing very blatant.

Without visibility on the effectiveness of their technology, the Inra researchers now emphasize the scientific issue of experience. So far, as often in GMOs, biologists have been working blind. The work began two decades ago when biotechnology balbutiaient. Agronomists in transgenesis saw a promising tool to stem the ravages of-leaf without remedy. This virus is injected into the rootstock roots by nematodes, small to contaminate 30 of the soils of the vineyards. It causes the deformation of shoots, disrupts the development of the plant and eventually degrade the quality of the grape. Geneticists have recovered the gene of the virus which encodes the protein component the envelope of the microorganism. They then inserted a copy reverse of this gene in the genome of the rootstock, with the hope of disrupting the production of the capsids and thus the multiplication of the virus. A first experiment in Champagne in the 1990s had shown some protection of lines having the transgene.

The importance of micro-RNA

But since the beginning of the 2000s, biologists have discovered that cellular life is more complex that they believed. They especially knew cell warning system based on micro-RNA. These small slivers of nucleic acids are switches in the genome: they selectively lock certain genes and know therefore stop or slow down the production of a protein. It is through this that pathogens took control of plant cells, but plants are also to defend via micro-RNA. Is that researchers are far from understanding all of the circuits of the chemical plant. They do not know, for example, if the rootstock protection guarantees of the grafted vine. Colmar experimentation should clarify the effect of the transgene on Microrna communications. "The first generation of GMOs and strategy of the capsid has been proven on many plants such as papaya or plum, but its application to the vine is less obvious, because resistance through the mediation of the rootstock. "Pressure of nematodes is also more constant, while papaya faces that aphids passenger flights," said Jean Masson.

Olivier Lemaire and his team are working on a second generation of vine GMOs to make more effective the action of micro-RNA. "It is to stimulate the defence of the rootstock that he defend as soon as possible after an infection." This is a speed race. "The work of consultation with the Monitoring Committee has also opened new avenues of research. "Researchers believed some years impossible that the transgene rootstock to the vine." "We do excludes it more", says Jean Masson.

For Marc Fellous, Colmar experience with the follow-up Committee should be attempted elsewhere to unlock research on GMOs: "A foreign, researchers are éberlués that could affect the vine, as symbol in France."