In the course of analysis to identify potential allergens in genetically engineered foods crops, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has belatedly discovered that the most common genetic regulatory sequence in commercial genetically engineered foods also encodes a significant fragment of a viral gene (Podevin and du Jardin 2012).
What Podevin and du Jardin discovered is that of the 86 different transgenic events (unique insertions of foreign DNA) commercialized to-date in the United States 54 contain portions of Gene VI within them. They include any with a widely used gene regulatory sequence called the CaMV 35S promoter (from the cauliflower mosaic virus; CaMV). Among the affected transgenic events are some of the most widely grown GMOs, including Roundup Ready soybeans (40-3-2) and MON810 maize. They include the controversial NK603 maize (genetically engineered foods) recently reported as causing tumors in rats (Seralini et al. 2012).