Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, Vol.105, No.8, 3045-3059, 2021
Gluten-degrading bacteria: availability and applications
Gluten is a mixture of storage proteins in wheat and occurs in smaller amounts in other cereal grains. It provides favorable structure to bakery products but unfortunately causes disease conditions with increasing prevalence. In the human gastrointestinal tract, gluten is cleaved into proline and gluten rich peptides that are not degraded further. These peptides trigger immune responses that might lead to celiac disease, wheat allergy, and non-celiac gluten sensitivity. The main treatment option is a gluten-free diet. Alternatively, using enzymes or microorganisms with gluten-degrading properties might alleviate the disease. These components can be used during food production or could be introduced into the digestive tract as food supplements. In addition, natural food from the environment is known to enrich the microbial communities in gut and natural environmental microbial communities have high potential to degrade gluten. It remains to be investigated if food and environment-induced changes in the gut microbiome could contribute to the triggering of gluten-related diseases.