By Lee Shearer

University of Georgia scientists want to build a better peanut - one that
won't trigger allergic reactions in people.
Most people can eat peanuts safely, but peanuts cause allergic reactions in
an estimated 1 percent of Americans.

For some people, the reaction can be fatal.

For years, researchers have sought ways to reduce the risk of peanut
allergies, mostly focusing research on developing medicines to help allergic
people or finding a way to treat peanuts after harvest.

Now, UGA researchers aim to change the peanut itself, eliminating some of
the proteins that trigger the allergy.

Scientists are not trying to rid peanuts entirely of substances that cause
allergic reactions, called allergens.

"I don't think you could have a non-allergenic peanut," said Peggy
Ozias-Akins, a plant geneticist and horticulture professor at the UGA
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences' Tifton campus.

If all the proteins in a peanut that can cause allergic reactions were
eliminated, the resulting peanut plant could not grow, said Ozias-Akins, who
has been researching peanut allergies for six years.

Ozias-Akins hopes to develop a peanut minus three of the proteins that cause
the most problems.

Steven Knapp, an Athens-based UGA researcher who specializes in genomics -
the study of an organism's genes and what those genes do - also is assisting
with the peanut allergy research.

So far, Ozias-Akins' research team has been able to grow peanuts without two
of the three worst allergy-inducing proteins by changing the peanuts' DNA in
a way that interferes with the plant's ability to manufacture the allergenic
proteins.

But the scientists want to go a step further to eliminate completely or to
inactivate the genes that produce the proteins - and that is harder than
what they have done so far, Ozias-Akins said.

To eliminate or inactivate genes, workers in the Tifton lab treat peanut DNA
with chemicals that cause genetic mutations, then grow plants from the
genetically altered peanuts.

"We have mutations, but we don't have the right kind yet," Ozias-Akins said.

www.checkbiotech.org