How does altering the dna of a peanut

There is currently no effective prevention or treatment approved by the U. Food and Drug Administration, except for emergency treatment given after accidental exposure. The only effective prevention strategy is to avoid the food that triggers a reaction. This can be a challenging task given the three most common allergies in American children are to peanuts, eggs and milk, items that are widely found in processed foods.

In their study, Wang and her colleagues analyzed DNA samples from 2, participants 1, children and 1, of their biological parents enrolled in the Chicago Food Allergy Study. Most of the children had some kind of food allergy. They scanned approximately 1 million genetic markers across the human genome, searching for clues to which genes might contribute to increased risk of developing food allergies, including peanut.

This study suggests that the HLA-DR and -DQ gene region probably poses significant genetic risk for peanut allergy as it accounted for about 20 percent of peanut allergy in the study population. Not everyone with these mutations, however, develops peanut allergy, and researchers wondered why. One possible reason, they determined, was that epigenetic changes may also play a role. Epigenetic changes, in which a methyl group attaches itself to the DNA, alter the expression of a gene without altering its underlying code.

The levels of DNA methylation regulate whether people with genetic susceptibility to the peanut allergy actually developed it. While the study represents a "good first step," more research is needed. For example, a better understanding of genetic susceptibility will allow for early risk assessment and prediction of food allergies, perhaps as early as in utero, Wang says.

Unlike genes themselves, DNA methylation levels can change in response to environmental exposures in particular, in-utero and during the first few years of life , and the changes are potentially reversible. By identifying what environmental factors can alter DNA methylation levels in people with genes that make them susceptible to peanut allergy, researchers could potentially open a new avenue for prevention and treatment of peanut allergy.

In some cases, this can be a complex task because the allergic reaction involves more than one gene, and changing the trigger that causes the allergic response requires multiple spelling changes.

This can be accomplished only with technology that can edit rather than simply knock out genes. However daunting the task of making these spelling changes might be, once accomplished, they will yield benefits far beyond their immediate application to peanut allergy. Nature tends towards efficiency, and a number of the genes and genetic pathways involved in peanut allergy are also involved in other allergies.

It also means that in dealing with peanut allergy, we also get a head start in dealing with other plant-related allergic responses ranging from gluten intolerance to reactions to grass.

We have the tools to tackle various allergies, and we know the tools work. The combination of GRON and molecular scissors has already produced a canola that resists plant diseases, as well as crops including canola, flax and rice that can tolerate herbicides. The views expressed are those of the author s and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. Current proposed solutions focus primarily on ways to alter the immune system of patients allergic to peanut.

However, with the advent of genetic engineering novel strategies can be proposed to solve the problem of peanut allergy from the source. The objectives of this study were to eliminate the immunodominant Ara h 2 protein from transgenic peanut using RNA interference RNAi , and to evaluate the allergenicity of resulting transgenic peanut seeds.