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A soybean engineered to be less allergenic by the Agricultural Research Service
(Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2002 -- CropChoice news) -- Using biotechnology, researchers shut off the gene for a crucial protein
that makes soybean seeds so allergenic to some consumers.
The advance--by scientists with the Agricultural Research Service,
University of Arkansas (UA), and private industry--could shorten the list of
products that soy-sensitive consumers often must avoid eating. Worldwide,
six to eight percent of children and one to two percent of adults suffer
food allergies. Soybeans, milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, wheat and
shellfish cause 90-plus percent of food allergic reactions, primarily in
children.
More than half of all soy allergies are caused by a protein called P34. Now,
however, Eliot Herman, Rick Helm and collaborators have developed strains of
soybean plants whose seed cannot make this allergenic protein. They resorted
to a biotech method called "gene silencing," rather than conventional plant
breeding, because P34 is so widespread among both wild and cultivated
soybeans.
Herman, an ARS plant physiologist at the Donald Danforth Plant Science
Center in St. Louis, Mo., believes this marks the first time a dominant
human allergen has been eliminated from a major food crop by this method.
Field trials begun in 2001 indicate the modified beans' agronomic properties
are no different than those of unaltered plants whose seed contains P34,
Herman reports. Testing continues, though, to further verify their
diminished allergenicity (or "hypoallergenicity") and commercial potential.
For example, this summer the researchers began feeding the hypoallergenic
beans to newborn piglets to compare the animals' reactions to those fed
unaltered beans. The study, which includes skin-prick allergenicity tests,
is being led by Helm, an immunologist at the UA-Arkansas Children's Hospital
Research Institute in Little Rock.
Eventually, this study and others could serve as a springboard to clinical
trials with humans and set the stage for commercial cultivars that could
benefit many food products, including flour, cereals and baby formulas.
A more detailed article on the research appears in this month's issue of
Agricultural Research magazine, available on the web at: | |
