The molecular effects of processing on the peanut allergens S. J. Maleki, T. Charles, C.C. Grimm, H. Cheng, B.K. Hurlburt Food Allergy Research, USDA, 1100 Robert E. Lee Blvd., New Orleans, LA 70124, Fax: 504-286-4430, [email protected] Food allergy is on the rise and the prevalence of peanut allergy has more than tripled in the U.S. in the last 20 years. Meanwhile, little is known ab...

The IgE response has been associated with both allergic reactions and immunity to metazoan parasites. Recently, we hypothesized that all environmental allergens bear structural homology to IgE-binding antigens from metazoan parasites and that this homology defines the relatively small number of protein families containing allergenic targets. In this study, known allergen structures (Pfam domain...

Boiled silkworm pupa is a traditional food in Asia, and patients with silkworm pupa food allergy are common in these regions. Still now only one allergen from silkworm, arginine kinase, has been identified. The purpose of this study was to identify novel food allergens in silkworm pupa by analyzing a protein extract after heat treatment. Heat treated extracts were examined by proteomic analysis...

Food processing unit operations can have effects on food allergens and their capacity to provoke reactions. The vast majority of food allergens are proteins, although most individual proteins in foods do not possess allergenic activity. Thus, the physical removal of proteins e.g. oil refining can eliminate the allergenic activity as is well documented for highly refined peanut oil. Furthermore,...

BACKGROUND The inhalation of Salsola kali pollen is an important cause of pollinosis during summer and early fall throughout desert and semi-desert areas. Sal k 1 has been previously reported as a major allergen of S. kali pollen. In this study, we produced the recombinant Sal k 1 and also its low IgE-binding mutant form. We further compared the IgE binding ability of these two recombinant mole...

The identification of B-cell epitopes is an important step to study the antigen- antibody interactions for diagnosis and therapy. The present study aimed to identify B- cell epitopes of osmotin using bioinformatic tools and further modify these regions to study the allergenic property. B-cell epitopes were predicted based on amino acid physicochemical properties. Three single point mutations M1...

BACKGROUND Group 5 allergens are small proteins that consist of two domains. They belong to the most potent respiratory allergens. OBJECTIVE To determine the binding sites and to study allergic patients' IgE recognition of the group 5 allergen (Phl p 5) from timothy grass pollen using human monoclonal IgE antibodies that have been isolated from grass pollen allergic patients. METHODS Using ...

Background New proteins introduced in foods through genetic engineering or processing are often evaluated for potential risks of eliciting food allergy (Codex, 2003). The primary risk is the transfer of an allergen or a protein nearly identical to an allergen and capable of causing IgE mediated cross-reactions into a new food source. The AllergenOnline.org database was developed to provide a cu...

BACKGROUND Birch pollen-allergic subjects produce polyclonal cross-reactive IgE antibodies that mediate pollen-associated food allergies. The major allergen Bet v 1 and its homologs in plant foods bind IgE in their native protein conformation. Information on location, number and clinical relevance of IgE epitopes is limited. We addressed the use of an allergen-related protein model to identify ...

Severity of peanut allergies is linked to allergen-specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies in blood, but diagnostics from assays using glycoprotein allergen mixtures may be inaccurate. Measuring IgEs specific to individual peptide and carbohydrate epitopes of allergenic proteins is promising. We report here the first immunoarray for IgEs utilizing both peptide and carbohydrate epitopes. A su...