An end to fears of allergic reactions from food or plants: That is what researchers from Plant Research International are aiming for. They are establishing which proteins in plants cause allergic reactions. The hope is that this knowledge will ultimately lead to non-allergenic varieties.
Plants contain various substances which can negatively impact people’s health. Many people suffer from hay fever caused by birch pollen, for instance. Others are intolerant to wheat gluten (they suffer from coeliac disease), or they get a tingling feeling or blisters in their mouths when they eat apples.
In the fight against allergens, our researchers are testing the differences between varieties. One variety naturally causes fewer allergic reactions than another. A screening of many varieties of apple for allergenic proteins led to the discovery of a variety that causes far fewer allergic reactions: Santana. Half of all people who suffer from apple allergies can safely eat this variety.
For birch, a similar screening yielded no positive results. The pollen grains of all the tested varieties and species of birch contain a mixture of different proteins, which always included one or more which people are highly allergic to.
Towards prevention
A screening of wheat varieties showed that differences do exist between varieties, but that no variety was safe enough for people with coeliac disease. So the next step is to work on that. After all, the prevention of allergic reactions is the best treatment, certainly in the case of coeliac disease. Approximately 1 percent of the population has this disease, but most of them do not know it. They continually complain of stomach ache or fatigue, but very often the link to coeliac disease is not made. This is also unfortunate because wheat gluten is added to various products, from bread to meat and fish products and even medicines.
For this reason, our researchers are working with researchers from Leiden University Medical Centre, who are identifying protein particles from gluten which cause the allergic reactions. The researchers then look at whether and in what quantity these particles occur in the various wheat varieties. If they find variants of those protein particles, the medical professionals test whether or not they produce an allergic reaction. In this way, non-allergenic varieties have been identified and a method has been developed for making safe gluten genes. Based on this, our researchers can work out a breeding strategy that can lead to the development of varieties which are completely safe.
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