Comparative proteomics of Bt-transgenic and non-transgenic cotton leaves

BACKGROUND: As the rapid growth of the commercialized acreage in genetically modified (GM) crops, the unintended effects of GM crops’ biosafety assessment have been given much attention. To investigate whether transgenic events cause unintended effects, comparative proteomics of cotton leaves between the commercial transgenic Bt + CpTI cotton SGK321 (BT) clone and its non-transgenic parental counterpart SY321 wild type (WT) was performed. RESULTS: Using enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), Cry1Ac toxin protein was detected in the BT leaves, while its content was only 0.31 pg/g. By 2-DE, 58 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were detected. Among them 35 were identified by MS. These identified DEPs were mainly involved in carbohydrate transport and metabolism, chaperones related to post-translational modification and energy production. Pathway analysis revealed that most of the DEPs were implicated in carbon fixation and photosynthesis, glyoxylate and dicarboxylate metabolism, and oxidative pentose phosphate pathway. Thirteen identified proteins were involved in protein-protein interaction. The protein interactions were mainly involved in photosynthesis and energy metabolite pathway. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated that exogenous DNA in a host cotton genome can affect the plant growth and photosynthesis. Although some unintended variations of proteins were found between BT and WT cotton, no toxic proteins or allergens were detected. This study verified genetically modified operation did not sharply alter cotton leaf proteome, and the target proteins were hardly checked by traditional proteomic analysis. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12953-015-0071-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.