Nature Biotechnology pp 75 - 81

Failed desserts may be a thing of the past as a new strain of wheat could make it easier to attain puddings with the perfect texture, according to new research published in the January issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Desserts, such as cream of wheat and chocolate fudge soufflé, get their texture from the degree of structural complexity of the starches used to make them—the more branched, the firmer and longer-lasting the texture. Ann Slade and her colleagues created a wheat that produces highly branched starches, called amylopectins, perfect for creating a smooth sweet. Using a non-GM/transgenic approach, they modified the wheat genes responsible for producing an enzyme that makes an unbranched form of starch, amylose.

Wheat is a hard crop to genetically manipulate because its genome is 10 to 20 times larger than that of cotton or rice. Slade and her team opted to induce changes in the wheat's own genome, rather than use a transgenic approach. Employing molecular techniques, they identified where these changes had disabled copies of an enzyme called granule-bound starch synthase 1 (GBSS1), which is involved in the process of producing amylose. They were able to breed so-called 'waxy' wheat strains—wheats that produce grains with mostly or exclusively amylopectins in them.

Besides their relevance for the food industry, such starches high in amylopectin content are also of interest to the paper industry and glue manufacturers.

Nature Biotechnology pp 69 - 74

French researchers have come up with a method for producing red blood cells that may one day help overcome the shortage of donated blood. In the January issue of Nature Biotechnology, Luc Douay and colleagues describe a three-step protocol to expand human blood-forming stem cells up to 2 million fold and transform them into red blood cells.

Previous attempts to produce red blood cells in the lab haven't succeeded because the cells were not similar enough to true red blood cells. But the new protocol—which involves growing the stem cells with growth factors and stromal cells, a cell type found in the bone marrow—results in the large-scale production of human red blood cells with similar shape, maturity and survival capabilities in mice as naturally occurring red blood cells.

Stem cells are a family of cells that have not yet committed to becoming any one cell type and can in principle be expanded to large numbers if the right conditions are found. Further studies will be needed to determine whether red blood cells produced in the lab can replace donated blood for transfusion into human patients.