Les OGM face aux nouveaux paradigmes de la biologie

Directeur de recherche honoraire de l’INRA ; Membre correspondant de l’Academie d’Agriculture de France Abstract: The assessment and risk management of GMOs are inherited from the paradigm of molecular biology born in the 1960s and from theories of evolutionary biology dominant in the years that saw the onset of GMOs. But these paradigms have been greatly challenged by recent advances in these disciplines: the dissolution of the concept of gene, the identification of epigenetic phenomena transmitted hereditarily, the discovery of the new continent of microRNAs, the metapopulation theory, the ability to trace gene flow over long distances, imply otherwise consider the properties of a genetically modified organism, whether or not dedicated to the dispersion in the environment. A symposium organized last february in Paris, in the framework of the ANR GMOs was designed to take the measure of these transformations of the paradigms of biology and to let clear how these results force to rethink the impacts of GMOs in the light of the new biology.