AllerTool: a web server for predicting allergenicity and allergic cross-reactivity in proteins.
Assessment of potential allergenicity and patterns of cross-reactivity is necessary whenever novel proteins are introduced into human food chain. Current bioinformatic methods in allergology focus mainly on the prediction of allergenic proteins, with no information on cross-reactivity patterns among known allergens. In this study, we present AllerTool, a web server with essential tools for the assessment of predicted as well as published cross-reactivity patterns of allergens. The analysis tools include graphical representation of allergen cross-reactivity information; a local sequence comparison tool that displays information of known cross-reactive allergens; a sequence similarity search tool for assessment of cross-reactivity in accordance to FAO/WHO Codex alimentarius guidelines; and a method based on support vector machine (SVM). A 10-fold cross-validation results showed that the area under the receiver operating curve (A(ROC)) of SVM models is 0.90 with 86.00% sensitivity (SE) at specificity (SP) of 86.00%.


BACKGROUND
AllerTool is freely available at http://research.i2r.a-star.edu.sg/AllerTool/.
Zhang
Zong Hong
ZH
Institute for Infocomm Research, 21 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Singapore 119613. zhzhang@i2r.a-star.edu.sg
Koh
Judice L Y
JL
Zhang
Guang Lan
GL
Choo
Khar Heng
KH
Tammi
Martti T
MT
Tong
Joo Chuan
JC
D000465:Algorithms; D000485:Allergens / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000276:immunology*; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D003429:Cross Reactions / Q000276:immunology*; D030562:Databases, Protein; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000276:immunology*; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface
D000485:Allergens; D011506:Proteins