Antibiotics as a Selection Marker for Development of Living Modified Organism

Over the past forty years, antibiotics as a selection marker have been used for development of a living modified organism (LMO). Since antibiotics have been selected first as a selection marker at early 1970, diverse application systems consisting of vectors and antibiotics were constructed by considering their kind and action mechanism. For the development of an effective and a safe LMO, we analyzed the kind and the frequency of antibiotics used until now. First, we collected articles published from 1999 to 2014 on the website. More than 463,000 volumes of research papers and 31 kinds of antibiotics were chosen. And then, we searched what kind of antibiotics to be used for research and how often they to be used for selection of transgenic organism. It is identified for 9,755 and 927 papers to utilize “transformation” and “selection marker” as keyword, respectively. Though sulphoamide shows most frequently in the collected papers, kanamycin is more frequently used in papers with transformation and selection marker as keyword. Hygromycin and sulfonylurea were used most frequently for transformation of plant and animal, respectively. In general, the use of antibiotics in the development of LMO is restricted by some reasons. Therefore, we suggest derivatives of antibiotics permitted legally to approve free usage in the development of LMO. The safety can be secure by right use and management in addition to the restriction to use.