The analysis of specific allergenicity of food allergens families

Abstract

Classification of food allergens based on protein's structure and function contributes to the study of the relationship between bioinformatics and potential allergenicity of allergens, as well as the evaluation of novel proteins' allergenicity. Some researches were focused on classification within plant or animal food allergens respectively, but there is not any classification of the wholefood allergens. In this article, we classified all the food allergens included in the SDAP into different food allergen families and analysed their specific allergenicity. According to allergen families in AllFam Database, food allergens taken from SDAP (Structural Database of Allergenic Proteins) are classified into different allergen families. Moreover, Protean of DNAStar was applied to analyzing the allergenicity of food allergens. 60% of food allergens are included in the five allergen families: Prolamin superfamily, EF hand domain, Cupin superfamily Profilin and Bet v 1-related protein. Besides, three other cross-food allergen families are found: EF hand domain, Serpin serine protease inhibitor and Triose phosphate isomerase, which include food allergens from both plants and animals. Common characters of food allergens from the same family were easy to find. For instance, they share the same specific peptides and potential T lymphocyte antigen epitope. This classification and characterization of allergen allergenicity in different food allergen families provide foundation for studying the structure and function of novel food allergens as well as the data for the assessment of potential allergenicity.