Characterization And Elimination Of An Immunodominant Soybean Seed Allergen

摘要

Food allergies have been recognized as a growing problem. Increased diversity of diets and sources have allowed much wider choices of food with that much greater potential to encounter a food that elicits an adverse immunological response. Among the major foods wheat, dairy, eggs and soybean are often cited as major sources of food allergies due to their inclusion as significant fractions of all foods especially prepared foods so often used in industrialized countries. The wide use of soybean products in processed foods poses potential threat to soybean -sensitive food -allergic individuals. The clinical symptoms of soybean allergy can be manifested as gastric distress or atopic dermatitis and while usually not life threatening, suspected cases of anaphylaxis have been reported. In vitro assays on soybean seed proteins with sera from soy-sensitive individuals have shown that the major seed storage proteins as well as other minor seed proteins account for IgE-binding. Among these IgE binding proteins is Gly m Bd 30K which was found to be identical to P34 a member of the papain superfamily of cysteine proteases previously identified by Herman and coworkers (2, 3). The identification of P34 as the allergen Gly m Bd 30K presented the opportunity to analyze a major food allergen in detail and to use the results of this research to design an approach to eliminate the allergen from a transgenic soybean line.