ALLERGEN DOMAIN ONLINE: A DATABASE FOR DOMAINS OCCURRING IN THE ALLERGENS

For the commercialization of GM food crops the biosafety issues pertaining to their allergenicity need to be thoroughly investigated. Sequence homology with the known allergens can serve as possible indicator of allergenicity since sequence homology between the proteins has high probability of causing crossreactions. 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. The database developed in this study provides the information about the domains in the allergens listed in the allergen online database (http://www.allergenonline.org). The database presented in this paper can be searched for the domains deduced to be present in transgenic proteins or other query proteins and can serve as an indicator for detection of possible allergenicity.