|
ARS
... solving agricultural problems with science. updated 11/6/03
If you're allergic to certain foods,
you may be familiar with some of these Eggs, milk, peanuts, wheat, fish, shellfish, tree nuts and soybeans are the "Big Eight" foods that can contain allergens. These are substances that can cause you to have an allergic reaction. People who are allergic to these foods usually have to avoid eating them. But this can be difficult, since so many good things to eat contain parts of these foods as ingredients.
The scientists' idea: shut down a soybean gene that makes the bothersome protein.
So what's all this got to do with soybean plants and allergies? What the scientists did was fool the soybean plant into tearing out a page from its own DNA manual--the page for making the P34 protein. The plant didn't literally take it out, though. Here's what happened. In the laboratory, the scientists placed an extra copy of the gene into the plant's DNA. That caused certain changes that the soybean plant read as: Virus Attack! In response, the plant completely shut off its own P34 gene, plus the extra copy that the scientists snuck into its DNA. The result: no P34 protein was made--at all! Scientists call soybeans with the missing P34 protein "hypoallergenic" (HY-po-al-er-GEN-ick) since those beans are less likely to cause an allergy. At least, that's what the scientists hope!
But, Helm warns, "You're never going to make a completely allergy-free soybean plant because you're not going to be able to eliminate all the proteins in it." Instead, the goal is to make a safer product for people who are sensitive to soy. That could also shorten the list of food products those people have had to avoid. -- By Jan Suszkiw, Agricultural Research Service, Information Staff Top/ Back to Related story: |
... bridging the gap between science, agriculture and you.
uncomfortable
symptoms: watery eyes, itchy rashes, burp!--gas, or a throat that
feels so tight it's hard to breathe.
Soybeans--used in flours, baby formulas, cereals, "veggie
burgers," and even pet food--are no exception. And it turns
out that when someone is allergic to soy products, what they're usually
reacting to is a protein called "P34" that's in the soybeans.
Now,
a solution to the problem of P34 is being studied by scientists
at the 
Genes are
part of a ladder-shaped molecule called DNA that's in all living organisms.
DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid (dee-oxee-ry-bo-newCLAY-ic-acid).
It is like an instructional manual that shows how something is made, how
it should look, and how it should work. You might think of a gene as a
page in that DNA manual.
So far,
the P34 protein hasn't shown up in tests
designed to detect it. Also, plants of hypo-allergenic bean crops look
just like those that have the protein. That's the report from Eliot Herman,
with ARS in St. Louis, Missouri, and Rick Helm, with UA's Arkansas Children's
Hospital, in Little Rock.
There,
Helm is feeding the hypoallergenic beans to pigs to see how they'll react.
Eventually, that research could lead to tests with
people.