De Novo Transcriptomic Analyses to Identify and Compare Allergens in Foods

Abstract

Food allergens have been traditionally identified using biomolecular and immunological approaches. However, the techniques used in extracting proteins from the food source to be analyzed may hinder the availability of all proteins when assessing immunological allergenicity. Additionally, depending on the number and pool of patient sera used to detect the IgE antibody-binding allergens, some allergens may not be detected if not all the patients in the pool are sensitized to all the allergens. To overcome these limitations, we describe an additional approach before the in vitro approaches, by analyzing the transcriptome in silico for all putative allergens within the analyzed food source.

Keywords: Allergen database; Allergen identification; BLAST search; Bioinformatics; Food allergen; Homologous allergen; RNA-Seq; Transcriptome assembly; Transcriptomic; Tropomyosin.