Gene-edited wheat ‘with 85 per cent less gluten’

SCIENTISTS have used geneediting techniques to all but eliminate gluten in wheat, potentially making it safe for those with coeliac disease.

People with coeliac disease cannot eat gluten as the wheat protein can cause major damage to their digestive systems.

The disease affects around one in 100 people and causes a severe reaction to strains of gluten known as gliadins. If those afflicted eat gluten, it can cause complications including gut cancer in the long term.

But they may have been given a lifeline by researchers, who are on the brink of creating wheat that is gluten-free.

Scientists from the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture in Cordoba, Spain, have created wheat that contains just 15 per cent of the gliadins found in normal wheat.

They used a tool that can ‘cut and paste’ sections of DNA called Crispr-Cas9 to remove genes for gliadins.

Out of a total of 45 genes that code for gliadins, the researchers, who published their results in the Plant Biotechnology Journal, managed to knock out 35.