Research article
Removing celiac disease-related gluten proteins from bread wheat while retaining technological properties: a study with Chinese Spring deletion lines
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* Corresponding author: Hetty C van den Broeck hetty.busink@wur.nl
- † Equal contributors
1 Plant Research International, Wageningen UR, PO Box 16, NL-6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands
2 Laboratory of Food Chemistry, Wageningen UR, PO Box 8129, NL-6700 EV Wageningen, The Netherlands
3 Allergy Consortium Wageningen, PO Box 16, NL-6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands
4 Leiden University Medical Center, PO Box 9600, NL-2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands
5 Dynomics BV, Erasmus Medical Centre, Department of Immunology, PO Box 82, NL-1400 AB Bussum, The Netherlands
BMC Plant Biology 2009, 9:41 doi:10.1186/1471-2229-9-41
Published: 7 April 2009Abstract
Background
Gluten proteins can induce celiac disease (CD) in genetically susceptible individuals. In CD patients gluten-derived peptides are presented to the immune system, which leads to a CD4+ T-cell mediated immune response and inflammation of the small intestine. However, not all gluten proteins contain T-cell stimulatory epitopes. Gluten proteins are encoded by multigene loci present on chromosomes 1 and 6 of the three different genomes of hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) (AABBDD).
Results
The effects of deleting individual gluten loci on both the level of T-cell stimulatory epitopes in the gluten proteome and the technological properties of the flour were analyzed using a set of deletion lines of Triticum aestivum cv. Chinese Spring. The reduction of T-cell stimulatory epitopes was analyzed using monoclonal antibodies that recognize T-cell epitopes present in gluten proteins. The deletion lines were technologically tested with respect to dough mixing properties and dough rheology. The results show that removing the α-gliadin locus from the short arm of chromosome 6 of the D-genome (6DS) resulted in a significant decrease in the presence of T-cell stimulatory epitopes but also in a significant loss of technological properties. However, removing the ω-gliadin, γ-gliadin, and LMW-GS loci from the short arm of chromosome 1 of the D-genome (1DS) removed T-cell stimulatory epitopes from the proteome while maintaining technological properties.
Conclusion
The consequences of these data are discussed with regard to reducing the load of T-cell stimulatory epitopes in wheat, and to contributing to the design of CD-safe wheat varieties.