Fig. 6
Pathway 4 Biodiversity: Potential horizontal gene flow of the dsxFCRISPRh transgene that would contain construct backbone sequences could confer a growth advantage to bacteria that are pathogenic to a valued species, thus reducing densities of valued species or ecosystem services. Horizontal gene transfer is not a harm per se. However, the horizontal transfer of gene that provides some growth advantage to a prokaryote could represent a potential harm. In any event, the presence of antibiotic resistance genes from the backbone sequences of transformation construct containing the transgene should be detected during standard product development and cause the transgenic strain to be eliminated for further progress towards field release. Nonetheless, this pathway is included here for the sake of completeness