Genetic and environmental factors affecting the expression of α-gliadin canonical epitopes involved in celiac disease in a wide collection of spelt (Triticum aestivum ssp. spelta) cultivars and landraces

BACKGROUND: Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disorder affecting genetically predisposed individuals whose dietary gluten proteins trigger an inflammatory reaction in the small intestine. Gluten is found in the seeds of cereals like bread wheat (Triticum aestivum ssp. aestivum) and spelt (Triticum aestivum ssp. spelta). The development of new varieties lacking immunogenic peptides is one of the strategies currently investigated to address the CD problem. Among gluten proteins, α-gliadins display the strongest immunogenicity with four main T-cell stimulatory epitopes. The objective of this work was to study the expression of α-gliadin epitopes related to CD in a wide collection of 121 spelt accessions (landraces and varieties, spring and winter accessions) from different provenances, and to analyze the correlation between the presence of epitope sequences in gDNA and their expression (cDNA). The effect of environmental factors (harvest year and N fertilization) on the epitope expression was also investigated. RESULTS: TaqMan probes targeting the canonical form of the epitopes were used to evaluate the epitope expression levels. Significant variations in the amount of epitope transcripts were identified between accessions and according to the provenances. Spring accessions showed a significantly higher immunogenicity than winter ones and no influence of spelt breeding on the epitope expression levels could be assessed when comparing landraces and varieties from Northwestern Europe. No correlation was observed between quantitative PCR results obtained from cDNA and gDNA for 45 accessions tested, stressing the need to use markers focusing on epitope transcripts rather than on genomic sequences. A relative stability of the amount of epitopes expressed by a same accession across four harvest years was detected. The fertilization strategy, evaluated through seven N fertilization modalities applied to two commercial spelt varieties, did not influence the epitope expression of the first variety, whereas it had a slight effect for the second one. CONCLUSIONS: The results obtained in this work showed that the CD-related epitope expression greatly fluctuated among the spelt accessions studied. This expression was not correlated to the epitope genomic occurrence and environmental factors had almost no influence on the amount of epitope transcripts. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12870-018-1487-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.