10/18/05 Wheat & Celiac disease research at WSU

10/18/05 Wheat & Celiac disease research at WSU

Farm and Ranch October 18, 2005 A California based agricultural biotechnology company Arcadia Biosciences, in partnership with Washington State University, has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to research novel lines of wheat with reduced Celiac Disease-causing proteins. Nearly one percent of Americans and four percent of Europeans suffer from Celiac Disease or gluten intolerance and currently the only treatment is to adhere to a gluten-free diet which means complete abstinence from wheat, rye, barley and their derivatives. WSU's Doctor Diter Von Wettstein, the R. A. Nilan Distinguished Professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Science is collaborating with Arcadia in this research. Special proteins cause Celiac Disease and Wettstein says researchers will try and shut them down using Arcadia's proprietary TILLING technology. Wettstein: "That is one has made mutations with a chemical and then there is a procedure to find out where these mutations are located. And that can be done on a large scale. So we are trying to find mutations that inactivate the peptide that is most serious." Wettstein says there is cloned genetic material available only in Norway from Celiac sufferers against which the mutated proteins will be tested. Wettstein says the procedures researchers will be using are not transgenic and if the results from the one-year grant are promising an application for larger funding can be applied for. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
Previous Report10/17/05 Barley production keeps shrinking
Next Report10/19/05 Winter wheat seeding update