Food Enzyme Database (FEDA): a web application gathering information about food enzyme preparations available on the European market

Following the European Commission No. 1332/2008 regulation and the consequent necessity of a scientific evaluation of food enzymes (FEs) for their approval for sale on the European Union market, many FE dossiers have been submitted to the European Commission and various documents currently co-exist. In order to centralize all relevant information in one structured location that is easily accessible to support enforcement laboratories and the competent authorities, we developed a web application, called Food Enzyme Database (FEDA). FEDA allows searching and collection of information originating from many different sources in one centralized portal. Queries can be performed using key information types, which include information on the producing company, production source (strain type, genetically modified microorganism status), type of enzyme protein and evaluation status with employed evaluation criteria. The database contains all current publicly available information. Centralizing all information coupled with intuitive searching functionality also allows the generation of general statistics regarding the current market situation. FEDA is open access and is freely available at the following location: https://feda.sciensano.be. Database URL : https://feda.sciensano.be

PATHOGENIC PROPERTIES OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED MICROORGANISM ASSESSMENT AS ONE OF THE CRITERIA OF BIOSAFETY

In the experiment there were studied pathogenic properties of the 10 genetically-modified E.coli strains and S. cerevisiae in terms of virulence, toxicity and toxigenicity, invasiveness and ability to the dissemination. Most of studied strains were shown to have no pathogenic properties and be able therefore to be recommended for the use in biotechnology. Along with this 2 strain of E.coli DLT1270 2 and E.coli ECR-HIS-T had a highly invasive properties and therefore can be a dangerous for warm-blooded animals and humans.

Construction of Sterile ime1Δ-Transgenic Saccharomyces cerevisiae Wine Yeasts Unable To Disseminate in Nature

ABSTRACT The use of new transgenic yeasts in industry carries a potential environmental risk because their dispersal, introducing new artificial genetic combinations into nature, could have unpredictable consequences. This risk could be avoided by using sterile transgenic yeasts that are unable to sporulate and mate with wild yeasts. These sterile yeasts would not survive the annual cyclic harvesting periods, being condemned to disappear in the wineries and vineyards in less than a year. We have constructed new ime1Δ wine yeasts that are unable to sporulate and mate, bear easy-to-detect genetic markers, and quickly disappear in grape must fermentation immediately after sporulation of the yeast population. These sterile yeasts maintained the same biotechnological properties as their parent yeasts without any detectable deleterious effect of the ime1Δ mutation. These yeasts are therefore interesting biotechnologically for food industry applications and for genetically modified microorganism environmental monitoring studies.