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Perhaps the mapping will yield new treatments for celiac disease? Perhaps the mapping will yield improvements against blight and pests, improving crop yields a
by rabboRubble 8y ago
Perhaps the mapping will yield new treatments for celiac disease?
Perhaps the mapping will yield improvements against blight and pests, improving crop yields and reducing human hunger?
- code_duck 8y agoThe current treatment is strict dietary exclusion of all protein from wheat, barley, rye and other related grains. It’s conceivable that wheat could be modified to produce proteins that are not immunogenic to celiac sufferers.
- Steel_Phoenix 8y agoThe challenge would be making sure that only that modified wheat was harvested. I'm sure it could be done, but a needle in a haystack seems much easier to find than a conventional wheat in a celiac friendly wheat stack. I'm not sure genetic mapping is really the core of the issue anyway. What we need is the equivalent of a reverse vaccination, since celiac is essentially an immunity to wheat. Such a concept might do for chronic disease what vaccination did for acute.
- code_duck 8y agoSure, that would be difficult. Keeping wheat out of even dissimilar grains is currently a challenge for food producers and processors. The test would be the same, though, as testing any other grain for contamination, which is routine - test for gluten. As far as future treatments, this clinical review https://www.gponline.com/coeliac-disease-clinical-review/gi-inflammatory-bowel-disease/article/1287495 https://www.gponline.com/coeliac-disease-clinical-review/gi-... concludes that “Future potential treatments for patients with RCD include the development of genetically detoxified grains, oral and intranasal 'coeliac vaccines' to induce tolerance, inhibitors of TTG, and detoxification of immunogenic gliadin peptides via oral peptidase supplement therapy.”