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Reply to 'Monitoring horizontal gene transfer'

Nature Biotechnology volume 22, pages 1349–1350 (2004)Cite this article

Jack A. Heinemann and Terje Traavik reply:

Our article points out that the relevance of transgene transfer to biosafety has been dismissed, as if its irrelevance were experimental fact. Davison misses the point by confusing the example of antibiotic-resistance gene transfer from transgenic plants to bacteria with our illustration of resistance evolution by gene transfer. We showed that based on experimental observations of resistance evolution, sound biosafety experiments have been impossible. Either the biosafety claims are experimentally verified or they are based on intuition and educated guesses. The standards of the science behind claims of safety should not be adjusted in the name of transgenic organisms simply because the claim is too difficult to verify.

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Reply to 'Monitoring horizontal gene transfer'. Nat Biotechnol 22, 1349–1350 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1104-1349b

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