Food allergies (FA) have dramatically increased in recent years, particularly in developed countries. It is currently well-established that food tolerance requires the strict maintenance of a specific microbial consortium in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract microbiome as alterations in the gut microbiota can lead to dysbiosis, causing inflammation and pathogenic intestinal conditions that result in the development of FA. Although there is currently not enough knowledge to fully understand how the interactions between gut microbiota, host responses and the environment cause food allergies, recent advances in '-omics' technologies (i.e., proteomics, genomics, metabolomics) and in approaches involving systems biology suggest future headways that would finally allow the scientific understanding of the relationship between gut microbiome and FA. This review summarizes the current knowledge in the field of FA and insights into the future advances that will be achieved by applying proteomic techniques to study the GI tract microbiome in the field of FA and their medical treatment. Metaproteomics, a proteomics experimental approach of great interest in the study of GI tract microbiota, aims to analyze and identify all the proteins in complex environmental microbial communities; with shotgun proteomics, which uses liquid chromatography (LC) for separation and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) for analysis, as it is the most promising technique in this field.
Keywords: food allergies; gastrointestinal track; mass spectrometry; metaproteomics; microbiota; proteomics.