An analysis of research trends on living modified organisms in Korea through questionnaire surveys

We analyzed the current research trends of living modified organisms (LMO) by questionnaires in the interest of making biosaftey laws and policies in Korea. We executed a pre-survey at the Crop Functional Genomics 2004 conference and obtained LMO research information from 423 LMO research organizations, including 32 national research institutes, 314 universities, and 77 industries. We found that the total 59 kinds of hosts including 26 kinds of plants, 15 kinds of animals, and 18 kinds of microbes were used for LMO research and E. coli was the most common host. The risk of the most experimental hosts was below a biosafety level of 1 (73.8%) and 2 (25.9%). LMO development use purpose was implemented in various developmental uses: 51.3% in test and research use, 19% in health and medical use, and 12.9% in agriculture use. The experiment product, waste product, and products of host for LMO development were 327.2, 223.6, and 13.5 in number of plants; 280.6, 52.4, and 8.7 in number of animals; and $8.3\;{\times}\;10^{11}CFU$, $7.7\;{\times}\;10^{11}CFU$, and $6.5\;{\times}\;10^{11}CFU$ in microbes in 2004. The survey results about how to possess the LMO were very unreliable, because only 10.6% of the researchers returned the questionnaires. Consequently, we strongly suggest the scientific organizations as well as scientists should have more interests in biosafety of LMO research and an LMO biosafety management system should be developed for Korea's future biotechnology.

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