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Low-gluten strain of wheat, which could be good news for people with gluten intolerance

Low-gluten strain of wheat, which could be good news for people with gluten intolerance

A low-gluten strain of wheat has been developed by scientists at the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture in Cordoba, Spain. This is good news for people with gluten intolerance or possibly even celiac disease.

The new cereal has been created using a gene-editing technique called CRISPR/Cas9 tool. 
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and is a genetic modification technique. This technology has been used to eliminate the majority of the gliadins in wheat. These are the gluten proteins which cause most of the gluten intolerance issues for people triggering celiac disease in genetically predisposed individuals.

We show that CRISPR/Cas9 technology can be used to precisely and efficiently reduce the amount of α-gliadins in the seed kernel, providing bread and durum wheat lines with reduced immunoreactivity for gluten intolerant consumers. ~ Dr. Francisco Barro Losada, geneticist whose team carried out the research.

Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley. It's what gives bread it's soft texture and the lack of it is why many gluten free breads are just not soft like wheat bread.

Certain conditions can cause an adverse reaction to gluten. Many people with autoimmune disease report that they feel better when they remove gluten from their diet. 
Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder that requires celiacs to completely remove gluten from their diets. Their immune systems respond incorrectly to gluten, which damages the gut lining and can lead to bloating, diarrhea, fatigue, malnutrition, anemia, brain damage and even gut cancers.

Let's hope that this low-gluten strain of wheat will soon be used to make low-gluten bread.


Journal Reference: Low-gluten, nontransgenic wheat engineered with CRISPR/Cas9.

You might also be interested in the video below in which 
Joseph Murray, M.D., a gastroenterologist and celiac disease expert at Mayo Clinic, discusses a journal article published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology about the diagnostic difference between celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity.


Scientists create Low-gluten strain of wheat

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