Medicosnext
A group of “big eight” foods—milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans—has been identified as the cause of 90% of food allergies. Among this group, researchers are trying to develop less allergenic varieties of wheat and peanuts, using plant breeding and genetic engineering. These are foods that not only are very nutritious, but are also difficult to avoid, keeping in view their wide use. While wheat is a rich source of fiber, vitamins, and energy, peanuts provide proteins, vitamins, minerals, and good fats.
In the case of wheat, the researchers are focusing on gluten, which makes dough elastic and contributes to the chewy texture of bread. While gluten can cause an immune reaction in those with celiac disease (an immune disease in which people can’t eat gluten because it will damage their small intestine), others may also show adverse symptoms due to non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Gluten is a group of many different proteins, and different genes contain the instructions cells need to make the individual gluten proteins. This complicated nature of gluten genetics makes it difficult to breed wheat varieties with lower gluten levels.
In the case of peanuts, although it contains 16 different proteins that can cause allergies, in more than 50 percent of peanut-sensitive people, it is mainly four proteins that trigger an allergic reaction. As with gluten, peanut allergen genes are also spread throughout the DNA, making it difficult to target all the genes. The researchers are using genetic engineering, in addition to traditional methods, to reduce allergenic proteins in the two foods.
It includes CRISPR technology, which allows making precise changes to a cell’s DNA, and advancements to this technology now allows researchers to target many genes at once. When targeted genes are changed, or mutated, cells are unable to read these genes to make specific proteins. This disruption of gluten genes in wheat could yield wheat with much lower levels of gluten, and similar could be the case with peanuts. Another approach taken by the researchers has been to understand the regulation of gluten production, and they have observed that one protein serves as a ‘master regulator’ for many gluten genes. So, disrupting this master regulator could lead to reduced amounts of gluten.
