For many, foods like wheat and peanuts cause harmful allergic reactions that can cause a variety of health issues including intolerances to anaphylaxis. Recently, Researcher Sachin Rustgi, and colleagues, from the Crop Science Society of America, have published research regarding applications of altering foods in order to make them less allergenic.
"People with food allergies can try hard to avoid the foods, but accidental exposure to an allergen is also possible," says Rustgi. "For others, avoiding wheat and peanuts is not easy due to geographical, cultural, or economic reasons," continued Rustgi.
Rustgi and his team are utilizing plant breeding and genetic engineering to develop less allergenic varieties of wheat and peanuts. The target protein for wheat is gluten, which is the main protein responsible for sensitivities. For peanuts, they contain 16 different proteins recognized as allergens.
"Not all peanut proteins are equally allergenic," says Rustgi. Four proteins trigger an allergic reaction in more than half of peanut sensitive individuals. "Affecting this many targets is not an easy task, even with current technology," Rustgi elaborated.
Rustgi is using CRISPR to target gluten genes in wheat. Recent optimizations in CRISPR technology allow researchers to target many genes at once.
"Wheat and peanuts are the major sources of proteins to many, especially those living in resource-deprived conditions," says Rustgi. "Finding affordable ways to make wheat and peanuts available for all is very important."