Now, a solution to the problem of P34 is being studied by scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the University of Arkansas (UA),
and Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a seed company.
The scientists' idea: shut down a soybean gene that makes the bothersome protein.
Genes are part of a ladder-shaped molecule called DNA that's in all living organisms.
DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid (dee-oxee-ry-bo-newCLAY-ic-acid).
It is like an instructional manual that shows how something is made, how
it should look, and how it should work. You might think of a gene as a
page in that DNA manual.
So what's all this got to do withsoybean plants and allergies?
What the scientists did was fool the soybean plant into tearing out a page from its own DNA manual--the
page for making the P34 protein. The plant didn't literally take it out,
though. Here's what happened. In the laboratory, the scientists placed
an extra
copy of the gene into the plant's DNA.
That caused certain changes that the soybean plant read as: Virus
Attack! In response, the plant completely shut
off its own P34 gene, plus the extra copy that the scientists snuck
into its DNA.
The result:
no P34 protein was made--at all!
Scientists call soybeans with the missing P34 protein "hypoallergenic" (HY-po-al-er-GEN-ick)
since those beans are less likely to cause an allergy. At least, that's
what the scientists hope!
So far, the P34 protein hasn't shown up in tests
designed to detect it. Also, plants of hypo-allergenic bean crops look
just like those that have the protein. That's the report from Eliot Herman,
with ARS in St. Louis, Missouri, and Rick Helm, with UA's Arkansas Children's
Hospital, in Little Rock.
