Title:Comprehensive Analysis and Annotation of Available Fungal Allergens for the Presence of T-cell and B-cell epitopes and Development of the SVM Based Classifiers for in silico Prediction of Novel Allergen Sequences
VOLUME: 15 ISSUE: 2
Author(s):Mehak Dangi, Bharat Singh, Sandeep Kumar Dhanda, Renu Chaudhary and Anil K. Chhillar*
Affiliation:Centre for Bioinformatics, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana, Regional Centre for Biotechnology, NCR Biotech Science Cluster, 3rd Milestone, Faridabad-Gurgaon Expressway, Faridabad, Haryana, Bioinformatics Centre, CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, Sector-39A, Chandigarh, Punjab, Centre for Bioinformatics, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana, Centre for Bioinformatics, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana
Keywords:Allergen, cross reactivity, database, epitopes, fungus, comprehensive analysis.
Abstract:Background: The reign of allergic infections caused by pathogenic fungi during the past few decades
has created a major concern among healthcare professionals. Fungal allergens cause allergic manifestations in
atopic and healthy individuals as well. The presence of T-cell and B-cell epitopes is essential for a protein to be
an allergen and sharing of these epitopes make the allergens cross reactive that is a major issue which should be
considered while selecting fungus specific allergens for clinical and diagnostic applications.
Methods: The present study is a gathered effort to provide the comprehensive analysis of the availa-ble fungal
allergens for presence of T-cell and B-cell epitopes along with the hint of cross reactivity among allergens of
different fungi. The annotation for about 1927 unique allergen sequences, related to 194 different fungal genus
is compiled and made available freely to be used by researchers worldwide through internet from the url:
http://facrd.mdurtk.in/. Besides this we have also put a step forward to de-velop SVM based classifiers trained
on reported fungal allergens and capable of making in silico predic-tions of novel allergens.
Result: The classifiers are provided in the download section of the web pages for the interested users.
Conclusion: The main purpose of this study is to help with the better management of fungal aller-gies by predicting
novel allergens as well as cross reactivity among them.
