Abstract A7
ASSESSING THE POTENTIAL ALLERGENICITY OF NEW FOOD PROTEINS
Steven M. Gendel. Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition .

Assessing the potential allergenicity of a protein that has not previously been part of the food supply is extremely difficult. Allergenicity assessment must consider factors such as the source of the protein, the physical and chemical properties of the protein, and similarity to known allergens. The degree of similarity to known allergens is determined by comparing the sequence of the protein to sequences of known allergens. To facilitate this comparison, two databases of allergen protein sequences were constructed and several sequence alignment strategies were tested. Because the proteins being compared in an allergenicity assessment are generally not related, the use of specialized allergen sequence databases allows identification of potentially significant short matches rather than evolutionary relationships. Local alignment algorithms are more appropriate than global alignment algorithms and use of the proper scoring matrix is necessary to reliably locate and characterize short matches.