Abstract
Celiac disease (CD) is an inflammatory disorder that damages the lining of the small intestine. The allergic reaction to the alpha (α)-gliadin class of gluten proteins present in wheat leads to this autoimmune response. α-Gliadin proteins of the wheat gluten form a multigene family with different number and type of CD-eliciting epitopes. The present experiment was planned to study the relative variations in the α-gliadin proteins and their CD-eliciting epitopes in the eight Triticum genotypes including three tetraploid (PDW 274, PBW34, Bansi162) and five hexaploid cultivars (C591, C273, K78, PBW 54, and 9D). Reference-based annotation followed by detailed analysis of unassigned gliadins for domain organization, epitope frequency, and phylogeny relatedness; out of total 43 gliadin genes, 8 were assigned to chromosome 6A, 26 to chromosome 6B, and 9 to 6D. Relative expression analysis revealed that durum wheat genotypes have lower expression of immunogenic epitopes than hexaploid. Chromosome 6A-specific T-cell stimulatory epitope combination was highyly expressed in all the cultivars followed by those from chromosome 6D and least from 6B. The lower proportion of T-cell stimulatory epitopes in PBW54 was due to the lower expression of the 6A encoded epitopic combination that was compensated by the relatively higher expression of non-immunogenic variants forms of 6B. This study is the initial step towards developing wheat that is less immunogenic for celiac disease patients.
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Abbreviations
- α:
-
Alpha
- BAM:
-
Binary alignment map
- CD:
-
Celiac disease
- NCBI:
-
National Center for Biotechnology Information
- RPKM:
-
Reads per kilobase million
- SAM:
-
Sequence alignment map
- TPM:
-
Transcript per million
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Director of Punjab agricultural University, Ludhiana Panjab, and Executive Director of the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI), Mohali, India for support.
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P. C. and M. G. drafted the manuscript layout and helped in overall supervision during manuscript preparation. Conceptualization—P. C., J. R., I. Y.; methodology—J. R, S.K., I.Y.; software—J. R, S.K., I.Y. validation—P. C., M. G., and S. K; formal analysis—S. K., I. Y.; writing-original draft preparation—M. G. and S. K.; writing-review and editing—S. K., P. C., M. G. supervision—M. G, P. C.; project administration—P. C.; funding acquisition—P. C. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Key Message
Diversity in alpha-gliadin epitopes open up doors for detection of wheat lines with lower immunogenicity.
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Arora, J.K., Kaur, S., Yadav, I. et al. Investigation of Differential Expression of Alpha-Gliadin Genes with Variable Immunogenic Epitopes in Hexa- and Tetraploid Wheat Cultivars Suggests Some Have Lower Immunogenicity. Plant Mol Biol Rep 41, 134–144 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11105-022-01356-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11105-022-01356-4