Abstract
BackgroundCeliac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disorder affecting genetically predisposed individuals whose dietary gluten proteins trigger an inflammatory reaction in the small intestine. Gluten is found in the seeds of cereals like bread wheat (Triticum aestivum ssp. aestivum) and spelt (Triticum aestivum ssp. spelta). The development of new varieties lacking immunogenic peptides is one of the strategies currently investigated to address the CD problem. Among gluten proteins, α-gliadins display the strongest immunogenicity with four main T-cell stimulatory epitopes. The objective of this work was to study the expression of α-gliadin epitopes related to CD in a wide collection of 121 spelt accessions (landraces and varieties, spring and winter accessions) from different provenances, and to analyze the correlation between the presence of epitope sequences in gDNA and their expression (cDNA). The effect of environmental factors (harvest year and N fertilization) on the epitope expression was also investigated.ResultsTaqMan probes targeting the canonical form of the epitopes were used to evaluate the epitope expression levels. Significant variations in the amount of epitope transcripts were identified between accessions and according to the provenances. Spring accessions showed a significantly higher immunogenicity than winter ones and no influence of spelt breeding on the epitope expression levels could be assessed when comparing landraces and varieties from Northwestern Europe. No correlation was observed between quantitative PCR results obtained from cDNA and gDNA for 45 accessions tested, stressing the need to use markers focusing on epitope transcripts rather than on genomic sequences. A relative stability of the amount of epitopes expressed by a same accession across four harvest years was detected. The fertilization strategy, evaluated through seven N fertilization modalities applied to two commercial spelt varieties, did not influence the epitope expression of the first variety, whereas it had a slight effect for the second one.ConclusionsThe results obtained in this work showed that the CD-related epitope expression greatly fluctuated among the spelt accessions studied. This expression was not correlated to the epitope genomic occurrence and environmental factors had almost no influence on the amount of epitope transcripts.
Highlights
Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disorder affecting genetically predisposed individuals whose dietary gluten proteins trigger an inflammatory reaction in the small intestine
The results obtained in this work showed that the CD-related epitope expression greatly fluctuated among the spelt accessions studied
Epitope expression profiling in a wide set of spelt accessions The expression levels of the four main canonical epitopes involved in CD were determined on 121 spelt accessions, including cultivars and landraces from Northwestern Europe (Belgium, Germany, Switzerland) as well as landraces from Eastern Europe, Spain and Near and Middle East (Fig. 1)
Summary
Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disorder affecting genetically predisposed individuals whose dietary gluten proteins trigger an inflammatory reaction in the small intestine. Gluten is found in the seeds of cereals like bread wheat The inflammatory response of the immune system to the presence of dietary gluten leads to a flattening of the intestinal mucosa, resulting in the malabsorption of nutrients. Gluten is composed of storage proteins from wheat The oat immunogenicity has been the subject of many discussions, but it seems that, when gluten peptides are found in oat products, they come from contaminations with wheat, barley or rye in the production chain, rather than from oat itself. The daily intake of gluten should be kept under 50 mg for CD patients [6] and they must follow a strict life-long gluten-free diet to avoid intra- and extra-intestinal symptoms such as diarrhea, bowel pain, fatigue, weight loss, anemia, osteoporosis, headaches and growth retardation [7,8,9]
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