ARS scientists aim to develop a new process that spreads the flavor evenly. Wehah markets rice cakes and other rice products under its Lundberg Family Farms label. With Kellogg Company, Battle Creek, MI, to study processed wheat bran products' ability to reduce formation of colon cells thought to be precancerous. Scientists have known for more than a decade that lab animals fed raw wheat bran have fewer of these cancer precursor cells, known as aberrant colonic crypt cells. ARS scientists will use bran samples from Kellogg to determine if similar findings occur when lab animals eat processed bran.
Wheat bran is the thin, fiber-rich outer layer of the wheat kernel.
The bran is used in breakfast cereals, whole-wheat breads, and other products. Certain genes that these scientists found and cloned may have an important role in orchestrating corn's growth. Biotechnologists might be able to restructure the genes to boost yields or enhance plants in other ways. This reveals what role the gene would have played had it not been turned off. Though seemingly indirect, the approach ranks as one of the fastest ways to reveal which trait a gene controls.