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New insights into the allergenicity of tropomyosin: a bioinformatics approach

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Abstract

The invertebrate panallergen tropomyosin is a protein with an extremely simple folding. This makes it a perfect target for investigating structural differences between invertebrate and vertebrate tropomyosins, which are not considered allergenic. Phylogenetic and sequence analyses were conducted in order to explore the differences in primary structure between several tropomyosins and to promote an experimental development in the field of food allergy, based on the study of tropomyosin. The phylogenetic analyses showed that tropomyosin is a useful evolutionary marker. The phylogenetic trees obtained with tropomyosin were not always phylogenetically correct, but they might be useful for allergen avoidance by tropomyosin allergic individuals. Sequence analyses revealed that the probability of alpha helix folding in invertebrate tropomyosins was lower than in all the studied vertebrate ones, except for the Atlantic bluefin tuna Thunnus thynnus tropomyosin. This suggested that the lack of alpha helix folding may be involved in the immunogenicity of tropomyosins. More specifically, the regions adjacent to the positions 133–135 and 201 of the invertebrate tropomyosins, presented lower probability of alpha helix folding than those of vertebrates and are candidates to be responsible for their allergenicity.

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Acknowledgments

The present study was supported by the Ramón Areces Foundation. JGF is supported by a PhD fellowship from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. We thank José Castresana for useful comments and three anonymous reviewers that helped improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Parasitología, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad Complutense, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    Juan González-Fernández, Marta Rodero & Carmen Cuéllar

  2. Servicio de Alergia, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria, Hospital Universitario de La Princesa, 28006, Madrid, Spain

    Alvaro Daschner

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  1. Juan González-Fernández
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Correspondence to Juan González-Fernández.

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González-Fernández, J., Rodero, M., Daschner, A. et al. New insights into the allergenicity of tropomyosin: a bioinformatics approach. Mol Biol Rep 41, 6509–6517 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-014-3534-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-014-3534-6

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