The dry roasting of peanuts is suggested to influence allergenic sensitization due to formation of advanced glycation end products (AGE) on peanut proteins. Identifying AGEs is technically challenging. The AGEs of a peanut allergen were probed with nanoLC-ESI-MS and MS/MS analyses. Amadori product ions matched to expected peptides and yielded fragments that included a loss of 3 waters and HCHO. Due to the paucity of b- and y-ions in the MS/MS spectrum, standard search algorithms do not perform well. Reactions with isotopically labeled sugars confirmed that the peptides contained Amadori products. An algorithm was developed based upon information content (Shannon entropy) and the loss of water and HCHO. Results with test data show that the algorithm finds the correct spectra with high precision, reducing the time needed to manually inspect data. Computational and technical improvements allowed better identification of the chemical differences between modified and unmodified proteins.
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