Allergen Bioinformatics - Immunoinformatics - page 88

Chapter 5
Allergen Bioinformatics
Bernett T.K. Lee 1 and Vladimir Brusic 2,3
1 Department of Biochemistry, Yoon Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of
Singapore, 8 Medical Drive, MD7 #02-03, Singapore 117597, [e-mail]
2 Institute for Infocomm Research, 21 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Singapore 119613
3 Present address: Cancer Vaccine Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 77 Avenue Louis
Pasteur, HIM 418, Boston, MA 02115, USA, [e-mail]
Abstract. Allergies are a growing health problem in developed and developing countries that result
in increased healthcare expenditures. This problem is further compounded by increasing number of
allergens found in genetically modified (GM) food and allergens found in unexpected sources
(hidden allergens). The importance of allergies has prompted the use of new methods like
genomics, proteomics, and microarray in understanding the nature of allergies. These methods have
generated large amounts of data that have to be stored, retrieved, and analysed using bioinformatics
approaches. Several specialized public databases have been created in response to increasing
allergen data. These specialized databases integrate the various information found in general
databases into a coherent set of data and provide bioinformatics tools suitable for further analysis.
The resources provided by these databases have paved the way for the creation of specialized
bioinformatics tools that allow for the prediction of allergenicity. These prediction tools are crucial
in view of the new sources of allergens, namely, hidden allergens and potential allergens in the form
of recombinant proteins in GM food. Here we review the bioinformatics resources and tools
available for the study of allergenicity.
5.1 Introduction
Allergy is a condition where the immune system responds adversely to certain substances
that are commonly considered harmless. In recent years, studies have indicated that
allergy has become a serious problem in industrial nations, affecting a significant portion
of the population (Jansen, Kardinaal, Huijbers, Vlieg-Boerstra, Martens, and Ockhuizen
1994; Malone, Lawson, Smith, Arrighi, and Battista 1997; Larche 2000; Kanny,
Moneret-Vautrin, Flabbee, Beaudouin, Morisset, and Thevenin 2001). In fact, allergies
are now the most common cause of chronic illness in industrial countries (Larche 2000).
Food allergies alone have been found to affect 2.4% (Jansen et al. 1994) and 3.24%
(Kanny et al. 2001) of the Dutch and French populations, respectively. This has increased