Wheat grains contain gluten proteins， which harbour immunogenic epitopes that trigger Coeliac disease in 1-2% of the human population. Wheat varieties or accessions containing only safe gluten have not been identified and conventional breeding alone struggles to achieve such a goal， as the epitopes occur in gluten proteins encoded by five multigene families， these genes are partly located in tandem arrays， and bread wheat is allohexaploid. Gluten immunogenicity can be reduced by modification or deletion of epitopes. Mutagenesis technologies， including CRISPR/Cas9， provide a route to obtain bread wheat containing gluten proteins with fewer immunogenic epitopes.
Wheat grains contain gluten proteins， which harbour immunogenic epitopes that trigger Coeliac disease in 1-2% of the human population. Wheat varieties or accessions containing only safe gluten have not been identified and conventional breeding alone struggles to achieve such a goal， as the epitopes occur in gluten proteins encoded by five multigene families， these genes are partly located in tandem arrays， and bread wheat is allohexaploid. Gluten immunogenicity can be reduced by modification or deletion of epitopes. Mutagenesis technologies， including CRISPR/Cas9， provide a route to obtain bread wheat containing gluten proteins with fewer immunogenic epitopes.
