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Review
. 2019 Feb 26;11(3):487.
doi: 10.3390/nu11030487.

Gluten Free Wheat: Are We There?

María Dolores García-Molina  1   2 , María José Giménez  3 , Susana Sánchez-León  4 , Francisco Barro  5
Affiliations
Review

Gluten Free Wheat: Are We There?

María Dolores García-Molina et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Gluten proteins, major determinants of the bread-making quality of wheat, are related to several digestive disorders. Advances in plant genetic breeding have allowed the production of wheat lines with very low gliadin content through the use of RNAi and gene editing technologies. In this review, we carried out a comprehensive study of the application of these cutting-edge technologies towards the development of wheat lines devoid of immunogenic gluten, and their genetic, nutritional and clinical characterization. One line, named E82, showed outstanding nutritional properties, with very low immunogenic gluten and a low stimulation capacity of T-cells from celiac patients. Moreover, a clinical trial with non-celiac wheat sensitivity (NCWS) patients showed that the consumption of bread made with this E82 low gliadin line induced positive changes in the gut microbiota composition.

Keywords: CRISPR/Cas9; NCWS; RNAi; coeliac disease; gluten; transgenic wheat.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. None of the authors has any conflict of interest that could affect the performance of the work or the interpretation of the data.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Gliadins and glutenins fractions revealed by using acid polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (A-PAGE) and sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), respectively (A) and RP-HPLC (B). ω, ω-gliadins fraction; γ, γ-gliadins fraction; α/β, α/β-gliadins fraction; HMW, high molecular weight glutenins subunit; LMW, low molecular weight glutenins subunit.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Gliadins and glutenins genes location in wheat chromosomes 1 and 6. Reprinted from thesis manuscript of Gil-Humanes (https://helvia.uco.es/handle/10396/5233).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Boxplot of the low-gliadin transgenic lines included in the set of trial published to date. Variables: content of omega-, alpha- and gamma-gliadin, total gliadin content, HMW- and LMW-gluten, total glutenin content, prolamin content (gliadin + glutenin contents), gluten (as measured by monoclonal antibody R5), and gliadin to glutenin ratio. Data have been transformed to fold change of their respective wild-type genotype.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Boxplot of fold change of variables for lines D783, D793 and E82 in the set of trials published to date; Prolamin and prolamin fractions contents, gluten content and Gli to Glu ratio. Raw data have been collected from Gil-Humanes et al, 2010 [40]; Barro et al, 2016 [45]; Pistón et al, 2013 [46]; García-Molina et al, 2017 [47]; Ozuna & Barro, 2017 [48]. HMW, high molecular weight; LMW, low molecular weight.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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