Allergen Domain Online Database

Allergen Domain Online Database
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 The biosafety of GM crops needs to be thoroughly scrutinized for their potential allergenicity, prior to their introduction into the market. The source of the protein, sequence similarity with known allergenic proteins, in vitro digestibility and degradability, sera binding tests, animal models and clinical tests are the various components of the allergenicity assesment recommended by the Codex Alimentarius guidelines. There may be ethical issues  over these clinical or immunological tests as they may expose patients to harmful substances that may elicit adverse reactions. A ‘weight of evidence’ approach that includes  bioinformatics, digestibility and animal models is recommended by the Codex Alimentarius guidelines to assess the risk of allergenicity of GM foods.The in silico sequence analysis is prequisite to the various strategies employed for assessing the potential allergenicity..  A revised decision tree approach has been  set forth by the Food and Agricultural Organization/World Health Organization (FAO/WHO) of the United Nations to advance the startegy for allergy-related safety assessment of genetically transformed foods. This decision tree has increased the rigor in the evaluation of amino acid sequence homology from 8 amino acids to 6 amino acids,  and  a 35% identity match over any 80 or more contiguous amino acids throughout the sequence of the protein. Sequence homology between the proteins has highly probability of  causing  cross-reactions.  However, structures with low sequence similarity may also cause cross-reactivity due to the fact that the structural similarity is possible even in absence of sequence similarity. This database provides a listing of the domains in the allergens listed in the allergen online database. This database can be searched for the domains deduced to be present in transgenic proteins or other query proteins and this can serve as a resource for detection of possible allergenicity.