Publications by authors named "Scherf K"

Amylase/trypsin-inhibitors (ATIs) are triggers for wheat-related disorders like baker's asthma and non-celiac wheat sensitivity. With the rise of wheat-related disorders among the population, the hypothesis that breeding may have resulted in changes in the protein composition of wheat was put forward. The ATI content of 14 German common wheat landraces and six modern varieties harvested in three consecutive years was analyzed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, and the inhibitory activity against α-amylase was measured with an enzymatic assay.

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Gluten-free products must not contain more than 20 mg/kg of gluten to be safe for consumption by celiac disease patients. Almost all analytical methods are calibrated to wheat, wheat gluten or gliadin, and there is no rye-specific reference material available. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of the harvest year on rye gluten composition and to generate distinct rye isolates to serve as calibration standards.

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Wheat lipids are a minor constituent of wheat, with an important influence on its processing properties. While breeding aimed to improve the protein composition of wheat flour, its influence on the lipid composition remains unknown. We therefore analyzed the lipidome of 60 different common wheat () flours representing cultivars registered and grown in Germany from 1891 to 2010.

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Landraces are genetically heterogeneous plant populations that are regionally particularly well adapted to the natural and cultural agricultural environment. Their genetic memory originates from pre-industrial agriculture and food production with consequences for their agronomic and processing performance. Since wheat-related disorders have increased in the population, breeding might have resulted in changes in the protein composition.

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Article Synopsis
  • Acrylamide is a harmful contaminant found in cereal-based baked goods, classified as a class 2A carcinogen, and its formation can be reduced by converting asparagine to aspartic acid using asparaginase enzymes.
  • Four types of asparaginases were tested on oat, corn, and rice cookies, showing significant reductions in acrylamide levels—up to 97% for oat cookies compared to control samples—while only causing minor changes in the cookies' color and texture.
  • The study highlights the strong link between acrylamide levels and free asparagine in flour, suggesting that using asparaginases could enhance food safety and potentially shape regulatory guidelines and consumer choices.
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Recent reports have highlighted that beer labelled "gluten-free", crafted with enzymatic treatments to remove gluten, may contain polypeptides that could be immunotoxic to individuals with coeliac disease. As strict adherence to a gluten-free diet is the only way to manage this condition, accurate labelling is crucial to those with coeliac disease. This paper aims to discuss the presence, levels and immunogenicity of gluten peptides found in gluten-reduced barley beers.

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Wheat gluten is responsible for the unique baking properties of wheat flour, but it also causes wheat-related disorders in predisposed individuals. Different commercially available gluten materials are commonly used for a variety of assays, but a detailed characterization of their composition is missing in many cases. This is why we aimed to provide an in-depth analysis of three commonly used gliadin and gluten materials from two different batches using gel electrophoretic and chromatographic techniques.

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Wheat species with various ploidy levels may be different regarding their immunoreactive potential in celiac disease (CD), but a comprehensive comparison of peptide sequences with known epitopes is missing. Thus, we used an untargeted liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method to analyze the content of peptides with CD-active epitope in the five wheat species common wheat, spelt, durum wheat, emmer, and einkorn. In total, 494 peptides with CD-active epitope were identified.

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Wheat allergy dependent on augmentation factors (WALDA) is the most common gluten allergy in adults. IgE-mediated sensitizations are directed towards ω5-gliadin but also to other wheat allergens. The value of the different in vitro cellular tests, namely the basophil activation test (BAT) and the active (aBHRA) and passive basophil histamine-release assays (pBHRA), in the detection of sensitization profiles beyond ω5-gliadin has not been compared.

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Background: Gluten composition is an important quality parameter of wheat flour. Reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) is a state-of-the-art method for its analysis. As this is a very labour-intensive and time-consuming procedure, alternative faster methods are desirable.

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Article Synopsis
  • Adolescence is a key period for changes in face recognition, leading to biases in recognizing individuals, specifically examining whether there’s an own-race bias (ORB) among teens.
  • A Bayesian meta-analysis of 16 studies involving 1,321 adolescents found a small but positive ORB effect (Hedges's g = 0.24), indicating that teens are slightly better at recognizing faces of their own race.
  • The study's limitations include a lack of diversity in the sample, mainly consisting of White adolescents, highlighting the need for future research with more varied racial backgrounds to better understand ORB dynamics during adolescence.
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Lipases are promising improvers of cake batter and baking properties. Their suitability for use in various cake formulations cannot be predicted yet, because the reactions that lead to macroscopic effects need to be unravelled. Therefore, the lipidome of three different cake recipes with and without lipase treatment was assessed by ultra high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry before and after baking.

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A core feature of autism involves difficulty perceiving and interpreting eye gaze shifts as nonverbal communicative signals. A hypothesis about the origins of this phenotype is that it emerges from developmentally different social visual attention (SVA). We developed Social Games for Autistic Adolescents (SAGA; Scherf et al.

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Wheat amylase/trypsin-inhibitors (ATI) are known triggers for wheat-related disorders. The aims of our study were to determine (1) the inhibitory activity against different α-amylases, (2) the content of albumins and globulins (ALGL) and total ATI and (3) to correlate these parameters in wholegrain flour of hexaploid, tetraploid and diploid wheat species. The amount of ATI within the ALGL fraction varied from 0.

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Wheat kernel proteins are not homogeneously distributed throughout the endosperm. The goal of this study was to investigate the relative differences in protein composition between the aleurone, sub-aleurone and inner endosperm. Using laser microdissection followed by nanoLC-MS/MS, an innovative method combining high spatial specificity and analytical selectivity in sample-limited situations, 780 proteins were detected and classified by function.

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Article Synopsis
  • There has been slow progress in developing effective mental health interventions, prompting the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to launch an experimental-therapeutics initiative to speed up research and application.
  • The approach focuses on identifying specific "target mechanisms"—processes that lead to improvements in clinical outcomes—and emphasizes collaboration among various stakeholders, including patients and providers.
  • The article discusses essential components of this approach, such as selecting clinical outcomes, defining and measuring target mechanisms, and tackling practical challenges for future research directions.
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The prevalence of hypersensitivities towards wheat has increased in the last decades. Apart from celiac disease these include allergic and other inflammatory reactions summarized under the term non-celiac wheat sensitivity. One suspected trigger is the family of amylase/trypsin-inhibitors (ATIs), non-gluten proteins that are prominent wheat allergens and that activate the toll-like receptor 4 on intestinal immune cells to promote intestinal and extra-intestinal inflammation.

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A comprehensive in-situ analysis of the developing gluten network during kneading is still a gap in cereal science. With an in-line microscale shear kneading and measuring setup in a conventional rheometer, a first step was taken in previous works toward fully comprehensible gluten network development evaluation. In this work, this setup was extended by an in-situ optical analysis of the evolving gluten network.

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Food processing conditions affect the structure, solubility, and therefore accurate detection of gluten proteins. We investigated the influence of dough, bread, and pretzel making on the composition of different wheat protein fractions obtained by Osborne fractionation. The albumin/globulin, gliadin, and glutenin fractions from flour, dough, crispbread, bread, and pretzel were analyzed using RP-HPLC, SDS-PAGE, and untargeted nanoLC-MS/MS.

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Wheat-dependent exercise-induced anaphylaxis (WDEIA) is an IgE-mediated food allergy with allergic symptoms ranging from intermittent urticaria to severe anaphylaxis that occurs when wheat ingestion is combined with augmenting cofactors such as exercise, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or alcohol. In most cases, patients are identified by sensitization to ω5-gliadins in the gluten fraction of wheat. ω5-gliadin-negative subtypes of WDEIA are often difficult to diagnose and may be caused by Tri a 14 (wheat lipid transfer protein), after percutaneous sensitization with hydrolyzed wheat proteins, or, in rare cases, by cross-reactivity to grass pollen.

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Celiac disease (CD) can be triggered in susceptible individuals by the consumption of gluten, a complex storage protein mixture present in wheat, rye and barley. There is no specific reference material (RM) available for barley and this leads to inaccurate quantitation of barley gluten in supposedly gluten-free foods. Therefore, the aim was to select representative barley cultivars to establish a new barley RM.

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Gluten composition is an important quality parameter for wheat flour, because it is strongly correlated to baking quality. Wheat proteins are commonly extracted stepwise and analysed using RP-HPLC-UV to determine the gluten composition. This procedure is very time-consuming and labour-intensive.

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Faces can be represented at a variety of different subordinate levels (e.g., race) that can become "privileged" for visual recognition in perceivers and is reflected as patterns of biases (e.

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