Researchers at Kansas State University have had a breakthrough in developing wheat-based foods that contain lower amounts of gluten.
Aaron Harries, vice president of research and operations with the Kansas Wheat Commission, says researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology to reduce the presence of gluten-coding genes in the wheat genome. “He reduced the number of proteins in a wheat variety that causes the reaction in people with celiac disease,” he says. “And he silenced some of those specific proteins.”
He tells Brownfield this doesn’t mean a reduced-gluten wheat variety will be available for wheat growers anytime soon.
