Allergen Bioinformatics - Immunoinformatics - page 94

Table 1. List of allergen databases and their URLs.

Name URL

Allallergy http://allallergy.net/

Allergome (Mari and Riccioli 2004) http://www.allergome.org/

BIFS (Gendel 1998) (Biotechnology
Information for Food Safety)

http://www.iit.edu/~sgendel/fa.htm

CSL (Central Science Laboratory)
allergen database

http://allergen.csl.gov.uk/

FARRP (Food Allergen Resarch and
Resource Program) allergen database

http://www.allergenonline.com/

IUIS List http://www.allergen.org/

Protall http://www.ifr.bbsrc.ac.uk/protall/

SDAP (Ivanciuc, Schein and Braun
2003)

http://fermi.utmb.edu/SDAP/index.html

Swiss-Prot allergen list http://www.expasy.org/cgi-bin/lists?allergen.txt

5.2.3.1 IUIS

The Allergen Nomenclature subcommittee of the IUIS maintains an official list of
allergens and isoallergens that conforms to the allergen nomenclature. The
nomenclature specifies that the first three characters of the allergen name, for
example Bet v1, are derived from the genus name (Bet = Betula). The next character
denotes the species name (v = verrucosa). The number at the end of the allergen
name indicates the order in which the allergen was identified. Isoallergens (i.e., Bet v
1.0101) have an additional dot followed by four additional numbers. The first two
numbers refer to the isoallergen. The third and fourth numbers indicate the particular
variant of the isoallergen. The list is available on the Internet (http://www.allergen.
org/Allergen.aspx) and is updated periodically. Researchers can submit new
allergens for inclusion into the list but the allergens must satisfy a prevalence of IgE
reactivity of at least 5% or a minimum of five patients showing IgE reactivity. This
ensures that the allergens contained in the list are clinically relevant. As of March
2007, the list contained 574 allergens and 869 isoallergens.
The allergens are classified according to the allergen source and each record contains
the species name, allergen name, protein name, molecular weight, type of sequence,
database accession, and literature references. Most other allergen databases require
access to the IUIS list. Nevertheless, the list is maintained as an HTML file with an
Excel-readable download version. The lack of a structured format (i.e., XML) makes
parsing of the information inconvenient and error-prone.

5.2.3.2 Swiss-Prot

Swiss-Prot maintains a list of allergens that currently numbers 347 entries (Release 52.3
of Apr 2007). Each allergen contains a link to the Swiss-Prot record, therefore the
contents of each record are the same as those of the original Swiss-Prot record. The
names of the allergens are in accordance with the nomenclature set out by IUIS.