Project description:Microarray analysis was used to compare gene expression of Aspergillus fumigatus under two different sporulation temperatures, 17oC and 32oC, with an emphasis on genes encoding known or putative allergens of the fungus. The objective of the study was to investigate whether allergenic potencies of A. fumigatus spores produced under different sporulation temperatures would be influenced by temperature-dependent transcriptional regulation of allergenicity genes.
Project description:Food proteins differ in their allergenic potential. Currently, there is no predictive and validated bio-assay to evaluate the allergenicity of novel food proteins. The objective of this study was to investigate the potential of a human peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) gene expression assay to identify biomarkers to predict the allergenicity of legume proteins. PBMCs from healthy donors were exposed to weakly and strongly allergenic legume proteins. Inclusion of multiple protein pairs from 2S albumins (lupine and peanut) and 7S globulins (white bean and soybean) in a larger study, led to the selection of CCL2, CCL7, and RASD2 as biomarkers to distinguish weakly from strongly allergenic proteins.
Project description:Microarray analysis was used to compare gene expression of Aspergillus fumigatus under two different sporulation temperatures, 17oC and 32oC, with an emphasis on genes encoding known or putative allergens of the fungus. The objective of the study was to investigate whether allergenic potencies of A. fumigatus spores produced under different sporulation temperatures would be influenced by temperature-dependent transcriptional regulation of allergenicity genes. Non-sporulating liquid culture of Aspergillus fumigatus was harvested and divided equally onto two sets of potato dextrose agar plates, one set for incubation at 17oC, the other for incubation at 32oC. After 48 hours of incubation, RNA was harvested from both sets of sporulating cultures, reverse-transcribed into dye-coupled cDNA and hybridized onto microarrays for analysis of gene expression. For each experiment, extracted RNA from the two cultures were hybridized onto two dye-swap technical replicate arrays. A total of three separate experiments were conducted for biological triplicates, for a total of six hybridizations.
Project description:Food proteins differ in their allergenic potential. Currently, there is no predictive and validated bio-assay to evaluate the allergenicity of novel food proteins. The objective of this study was to investigate the potential of a human peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) gene expression assay to identify biomarkers to predict the allergenicity of legume proteins. PBMCs from healthy donors were exposed to weakly and strongly allergenic legume proteins. Possible biomarkers for allergenicity were investigated by exposing PBMCs to a protein pair of weakly (white bean) and strongly allergenic (soybean) 7S globulins in a pilot experiment. Gene expression was measured by RNA-sequencing and differentially expressed genes were selected as biomarkers. 153 genes were identified as having significantly different expression levels to the 7S globulin of white bean compared to soybean.
