Japanese researchers have produced an egg that lacks the ovomucoid protein, which causes egg white allergy.
- People allergic to egg yolk and egg white are generally affected by digestive, cutaneous or respiratory symptoms.
- An egg that lacks the protein responsible for egg white allergy has been developed by Japanese researchers.
- Clinical trials will soon take place in order to confirm the effectiveness of OVM-knockout eggs with allergic patients.
Food allergy to eggs is characterized by various symptoms such as digestive (nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, etc.), respiratory (rhinitis, asthma, laryngeal oedema, etc.) or skin (hives, eczema, etc.) disorders. The shell of the egg is not allergenic, but the egg white and egg yolk are.
A chicken egg for people with allergies
Recently, Japanese researchers developed an egg, called OVM-knockout, lacking ovomucoid protein, which causes egg white allergies. The results of their work have been published in review Food and Chemical Toxicology.
“To use OVM-knockout chicken eggs as food, it is important to assess their food safety. In this study, we examined the presence or absence of expression of mutant proteins, the insertion of vector sequences and off-target effects in chickens whose ovomucoid protein has been removed by platinum transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALEN)”, explained Ryo Ezaki, author of the research and assistant professor at the Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life of the University of Hiroshima (Japan). TALENs correspond to restriction enzymes, which recognize specific DNA sequences and break or cut them.
OVM-knockout egg: the absence of the ovomucoid protein, responsible for allergies
During this research, scientists detected and eliminated the ovomucoid protein in egg white. TALENs were therefore designed to target a piece of RNA, called exon 1, which codes for specific proteins. Secondly, the eggs produced by the researchers were tested to ensure that the ovomucoid protein had been eliminated and that there was no mutant ovomucoid protein.
“Eggs laid by homozygous OVM knockout hens had no obvious abnormalities. The albumen contained neither the mature ovomucoid protein nor the truncated variant of the ovomucoid protein (…) OVM-knockout chickens were localized in the intergenic and intronic regions (…) These results show the importance of safety assessments and reveal that the eggs laid by this OVM-knockout chicken solve the problem of food and vaccine allergy “, said Ryo Ezaki. Other clinical trials will soon be conducted to confirm the effectiveness of its eggs with allergic patients.
