GM Wheat Means Hope for Celiac Sufferers
Genetically modified foods are becoming more popular in the news as they become more prevalent in our society. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has defined GM foods or GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) as crop plants created for human or animal consumption using the latest molecular biology techniques. These plants are modified in a laboratory to add nutritional value and/or enhance their most desired traits.
Genetic engineering can create plants with the exact results aimed for very rapidly and with great precision. Genes can be transferred from one plant to another, or from non-plant organisms to plants.
The advantages of genetically modified foods range from pest resistance, disease resistance, herbicide tolerance, cold tolerance, drought tolerance, improved nutrition, and pharmaceutical uses. All over the world, research is being conducted to create genetically modified foods.
Dr. Diter von Wettstein, R.A. Nilan Distinguished Professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences and the School of Molecular Biosciences at Washington State University, received grants totaling nearly $2 million from the National Institutes of Health and Washington's Life Sciences Discovery Fund in 2008 and 2009. Wettstein was awarded the grants to advance his research to develop wheat varieties safe to eat by people with celiac disease.
Celiac disease is a digestive condition triggered by the consumption of protein gluten, which is found in a wide variety of breads, cookies, pasta, and many other foods containing barley, rye, or wheat. Individuals with celiac disease who consume gluten over a long period of time suffer damage to the small intestine, resulting in interference with the absorption of nutrients from food. Malnutrition can result.
Dr. von Wettstein's research focuses on removing the gliadins and gliadin-type prolamins from the gluten protein in wheat. It is the gliadins that specifically cannot be digested by individuals with celiac disease; they eventually cross the intestinal wall, causing a damaging T-cell response to the intestinal lining.
Currently, there is no cure for celiac disease and the only treatment is to adopt a gluten-free diet; this includes eliminating all barley, rye, and wheat-based foods. Making this diet much more difficult to maintain, gluten is also used as a filler or binder in many additional food and non-food items that one would not expect. These items range from deli meats to medicines, vitamins, beer, licorice, and the adhesive on stamps and envelopes.
"Medical experts at the National Institutes of Health have declared urgency in dealing with celiac disease, the most common food-sensitive intestinal condition in humans, and require faster and more decisive methods such as transgenic breeding, in which genes are transferred from different species," said Dr. von Wettstein, a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. von Wettstein and his team have identified a fully viable, lysine-rich barley mutant that lacks the gliadin-type and low-molecular-weight glutenins that are currently shown to be exclusively responsible for dough elasticity and exceptional baking quality. Using genetic methods to remove the celiac-causing gliadins and low-molecular glutenins, Dr. von Wettstein's task is to produce a similar wheat grain while preserving wheat's baking qualities.
As an extra asset, the resulting grain will contain more lysine; an amino acid essential for an optimal diet that is usually deficient in wheat.
"Creating new cultivars of wheat, arguably the most important crop grown, having increased lysine and lacking gliadins will be of tremendous benefit not only for sufferers of celiac disease, but for all consumers of wheat and wheat products," said von Wettstein.
Dr. von Wettstein and his team have partnered with the Seattle-based biotechnology company Arcadia Biosciences to screen large populations of wheat, to be able to identify gene mutants that affect the celiac-triggering protein types.
© Food Safety News
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Discuss
01/10/2010
2:58AM
I think they should definitely start doing this with all wheat. You can get milk without the lactose, so why not wheat without the gluten? Seems odd really that this hasn't been done already!
01/10/2010
5:48AM
I strongly agree
01/13/2010
2:23PM
Although in general I'm against the genetic modification of foods, I could perhaps be persuaded over removing gluten from wheat! I believe that there are many many more people suffering from gluten intolerance than is currently realised and it's causing uneccesary suffering by way of the many illnesses that an undiagnosed gluten intolerance can cause.
01/14/2010
3:25AM
I would like to see an example of a GM food that has been engineered for improved nutrition. This article doesn't even mention any of the health and environmental safety concerns of genetic modification. If you have a gluten intolerance, you are not meant to be eating wheat. Listen to your body.
I'd also like to mention that milk is different. There has been no cellular modification done to dairy cows to produce a lactose free milk. This is achieved with post production processing.
02/23/2010
6:50AM
I think that man has messed enough with our food chain. I think the increase of intestinal problems is because of the changing of our natural foods. I have research fully our family medical history on both sides of the family and there is no validity in the genetic transmission of celiac disease, yet my daughter has been diagnosed as celiac. Every day I go to the grocery store I run into another person searching to live gluten free that has been recently diagnosed celiac, and no family background to support it. Sorry either the medical community is playing a game or our food producers. I tend to believe it is the playing god with our food.
03/14/2010
7:36PM
Years ago, when I first found out about genetically modified foods, I was interested (and scared) to see what the long term effects would be. Considering gluten intolerance and celiac disease is on the rise, I'm not sure modifying wheat further (wheat has a long history of hybridization and modifying) is a good idea in the long run.
03/26/2010
7:51PM
i completely agree with Frances. Further, to remove gluten from wheat would be like removing the cold temperature from water, making plain water.
04/06/2010
4:50PM
As a celiac sufferer I think removing the parts of a protein from wheat that causes a celiac reaction would constitute a miracle. Simply removing wheat, barley and rye from a persons diet is next to impossible in our society. It is in everything!
To Frances: Doctors are only now becoming aware of celiac disease and its manifestations. If your relatives had celiac disease there is a high probability they were never diagnosed or, if it was severe, died at a young age.
06/05/2010
1:43PM
Lack of education breeds conspiracy theories.
05/17/2011
2:17PM
GMO crops are the trouble starter for health problems - research GMO relateion to celiac disease. GMO wheat is producing foreign protein that causes allergic reaction when exposed for a period of time. Some babies start allergic reactions when they start cereal diet made from GMO crops. And hold on – someone want to use GMO food to treat GMO caused disease? Sounds like good business to me. $ $ $ Caching$... caching$... Please educate yourself on GMO dangers.
10/18/2011
11:51AM
This article is nothing but propaganda for the interests of GMO producers to be given the "thumbs up" to continue tampering with the world's food supply. If they had there way, they would control all agricultural food supply. They already produce seeds that "expire" after a season so that you have to keep buying from them. They "tag" their seeds so that they can approach farmers who inadvertently had their fields contaminated and demand payment for crops grown from their seeds, etc... Since the exact cause of this epidemic response to gluten (actually gliadin the protein) is still unknown, and may very well be the result of environmental factors - I say "no thanks!" Don't let the promise of being able to eat doughy bread again be a dangling carrot for your compromise!
10/24/2011
6:59AM
The earliest varieties of wheat cultivated by humans contained very little, if any at all, gluten. Instead of GMing a modern hybrid, why don't we just grow the ancient varieties that evolved on earth naturally? It wasn't until the late 1800s that wheat contained significant amounts of gluten.
12/01/2011
8:44PM
there is no doubt this thread is on to something. I was basically shut down this year until I found my intolerance to gluten and corn. My father was born a wheat farmer and farmed the last 7 years before he retired. He is educated as a geologist and is a serious scientist. When I was recently talking with him about eliminating the grains from my diet and we got onto the topic of GM grains. Yes, we ask ourselves why all of a sudden with the gluten thing? Why all the auto immune disorders all of a sudden? I came on line specifically tonight to see if there was a result in searching GM with celiac (I have a metabolic issue with gluten, a totally different manifestation but I know celiac is the name for the common affliction). GM and celiac are very searchable terms in combination. My theory: The grain producers know they are in trouble for producing these digestive issues and a whole list of others that have not yet gotten the press. It is an issue because it makes their product undesirable to anyone intolerant-they can't sell their product. It is a side effect of the mods. So they are going to play the good guy and try to find a fix for it, as if it weren't caused by them in the first place. My dad says Durham is the only wheat variety that has not been modified and modification is not allowed for Durham. I think it would be interesting for a few of us to test Durham to see if it is tolerated.
01/31/2012
3:39PM
Nicole,
Interesting idea. Have you tested your hypothesis regarding Durham wheat?