Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular (INGEBI), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
PLoS One. 2010 Nov 17;5(11):e14030. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0014030.
Sensory analysis studies are critical in the development of quality enhanced crops, and may be an important component in the public acceptance of genetically modified foods. It has recently been established that odor preferences are shared between humans and mice, suggesting that odor exploration behavior in mice may be used to predict the effect of odors in humans. We have previously found that mice fed diets supplemented with engineered nonbrowning potatoes (-PPO) consumed more potato than mice fed diets supplemented with wild-type potatoes (WT). This prompted us to explore a possible role of potato odor in mice preference for nonbrowning potatoes. Taking advantage of two well established neuroscience paradigms, the "open field test" and the "nose-poking preference test", we performed experiments where mice exploration behavior was monitored in preference assays on the basis of olfaction alone. No obvious preference was observed towards -PPO or WT lines when fresh potato samples were tested. However, when oxidized samples were tested, mice consistently investigated -PPO potatoes more times and for longer periods than WT potatoes. Congruently, humans discriminated WT from -PPO samples with a considerably better performance when oxidized samples were tested than when fresh samples were tested in blind olfactory experiments. Notably, even though participants ranked all samples with an intermediate level of pleasantness, there was a general consensus that the -PPO samples had a more intense odor and also evoked the sense-impression of a familiar vegetable more often than the WT samples. Taken together, these findings suggest that our previous observations might be influenced, at least in part, by differential odors that are accentuated among the lines once oxidative deterioration takes place. Additionally, our results suggest that nonbrowning potatoes, in addition to their extended shelf life, maintain their odor quality for longer periods of time than WT potatoes. To our knowledge this is the first report on the use of an animal model applied to the sensory analysis of a transgenic crop.
感官分析研究在优质作物的开发中至关重要，并且可能是公众接受转基因食品的一个重要组成部分。最近已经确定，人类和老鼠之间存在气味偏好，这表明老鼠的气味探索行为可能用于预测人类对气味的影响。我们之前发现，喂食添加工程非褐变土豆（-PPO）的饮食的老鼠比喂食添加野生型土豆（WT）的饮食的老鼠消耗更多的土豆。这促使我们探索土豆气味在老鼠对非褐变土豆的偏好中的可能作用。利用两个成熟的神经科学范式，即“开阔场测试”和“鼻刺偏好测试”，我们进行了实验，仅根据嗅觉在偏好测定中监测老鼠的探索行为。当测试新鲜土豆样品时，未观察到对-PPO 或 WT 品系的明显偏好。但是，当测试氧化样品时，老鼠持续地探查-PPO 土豆的次数更多，时间更长，而不是 WT 土豆。与之相符的是，在盲嗅觉实验中，当测试氧化样品时，人类对 WT 从-PPO 样品的区分性能明显优于测试新鲜样品。值得注意的是，即使参与者对所有样品的愉悦程度进行了中等水平的排序，但普遍认为-PPO 样品的气味更浓烈，并且比 WT 样品更频繁地唤起熟悉蔬菜的感觉印象。总而言之，这些发现表明，我们之前的观察结果可能至少部分受到影响，因为一旦发生氧化劣化，品系之间的差异气味会被放大。此外，我们的结果表明，非褐变土豆除了延长的保质期外，还能保持其气味质量更长的时间，比 WT 土豆更长。据我们所知，这是首次报告使用动物模型应用于转基因作物的感官分析。
