Allergenic Proteins of Tilia Cordata

Abstract

Pollen forms large amount of aeroallergens in the atmosphere that spread through winds and insects. Allergenic pollen grains are water-soluble glycoprotein or protein bioparticles and its weight is approximately 5-80 kDa. There are many factors that cause allergies and considering the recently changing climatic conditions and their ability to spread over a wide geographical areas, pollens are among the major factors causing allergies. In this study, it was aimed to detect potential allergen pollen proteins of Tilia cordata which is a potent allergen. The pollen samples belonging to T. cordata were dried and then they were separated with sieve. Acetone washing and dialysis processes were applied to purificate pollen. Afterwards, the amount of protein in the pollens of T. cordata was determined by the bicinchoninic acid (BCA) method. In order to detect allergen proteins, gel runing was performed by SDS-PAGE. Silver staining method was applied to make visible the bands of T. cordata pollen proteins obtained from the gel. Five different allergenic pollen proteins, weights 10, 23, 40, 50 and 80 kDa, were detected as a result of SDS-PAGE. This is the second study in the literature related with the identification of T. cordata allergenic proteins and we showed two different protein bands compared with the former study result. Besides, our study is original in this perspective. We think that this study contributes to the literature on allergenic proteins of T. cordata and should be supported by future studies.