Genetic use restriction technology
[3][4] GURTs can be used by agricultural firms to enhance protection of their innovations in genetically modified organisms by making it impossible for farmers to reproduce the desired traits on their own.
The purpose of the development was to protect the intellectual property of biotechnology firms that the United States Department of Agriculture viewed as being a specifically American technological competence.
[5][8] In other versions of the process, an operator must bind to the trait switch in order for it to make the enzymes that cut out the blocker sequence.
[13] These uses include protection of intellectual property for biotechnological innovations, and bio-confinement (preventing escape of genetically engineered genes into nature).
[7] This problem is not generally posed for farmers using hybrid seeds (which, in any case, are not fertile or do not breed true) and, thus, could not be used to grow subsequent crops.
However, the V-GURTS make it impossible for farmers to use seeds they have produced to grow crops in subsequent seasons because the entire genome of the targeted cells is destroyed.
[4] This risk of escape is one of the reasons that the GURT process has not yet been used in commercial applications (indeed, the main producing companies have vowed to not commercialise these products, though they still have related research programs).
GURTs, because they control plant fertility in various ways, could be used to prevent the escape of transgenes into wild relatives and help reduce risks of deleterious impacts on biodiversity.
in pharmacology, therapeutic proteins, monoclonal antibodies and vaccines) could be armed with GURTs to prevent accidental transmission of these traits into crops meant for foods.
[14] As of 2006, GURT seeds have not been commercialized anywhere in the world due to opposition from farmers, consumers, indigenous peoples, NGOs, and some governments.
[15] Some analysts have expressed concerns that GURT seeds might adversely impact biodiversity and threaten native species of plants.
[16][17] However, proponents of the technology dispute these claims, arguing that because non-GMO hybrid plants are used in the same way and GURT seeds could help farmers deal with cross pollination, the benefits outweigh the potential negatives.
[19] Specifically, the moratorium recommended that, due to a lack of research on the technology's potential risks, no field testing of GURTs nor products using them should be allowed until there was a sufficiently justified reason to do so.
