Degradation of Endogenous and Exogenous Genes of Roundup-Ready Soybean during Food Processing

Roundup-Ready soybeans have been genetically modified to resist the effects of the herbicidal glyphosate and have become the most prevalent transgenic crop in the world. In this work, Roundup-Ready soybeans were used as raw material to study the effects of critical processing procedures such as grinding, cooking, blending, homogenization, sterilization, and spray-drying on the length of DNA fragments of an endogenous gene (lectin) and an exogenous gene (epsps) examined in material from three soybean foods of bean curd, soy milk, and soy powder and from samples taken during their processing. The results showed that various processing procedures caused degradations of both the endogenous and exogenous genes to different degrees. In the grinding procedure, endogenous gene DNA was degraded from 1883 to 836 bp, and exogenous gene DNA was degraded from 1512 to 408 bp. In the blending and squeeze-molding procedures, exogenous gene DNA was also degraded from about 408 to 190 bp, but there was no obvious action on the endogenous gene. After the endogenous and exogenous genes had been degraded to some degree, such as 836 and 408 bp, respectively, they were not evidently affected by cooking procedure at 100 °C for 15 min. However, the endogenous gene was further considerably degraded from around 836 to 162 bp in the sterilization procedure at 121 °C for 30 s. The effect of the homogenization step on endogenous and exogenous genes was similar to that of the cooking procedure. The coagulation procedure, principally a biochemical reaction, did not greatly affect the exogenous gene but did affect endogenous gene, reducing DNA size from about 836 to 407 bp. Furthermore, the spray-drying procedure, a process of physical shearing, high temperature, and sudden high pressure, distinctly caused degradation of both the lectin and epsps genes, rapidly decreasing the sizes from about 836 to 162 bp for the endogenous gene and from about 408 to 190 bp for the exogenous gene.

Keywords: Roundup-Ready soybean; processing procedures; endogenous gene; exogenous gene; degradation