Skip Navigation



Bioinformatics Advance Access published online on December 6, 2006
Bioinformatics, doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btl621
This Article
Right arrow Advance Access manuscript (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
23/4/504    most recent
btl621v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Zhang, Z. H.
Right arrow Articles by Tong, J. C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Zhang, Z. H.
Right arrow Articles by Tong, J. C.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Received August 21, 2006
Revised November 23, 2006
Accepted December 1, 2006

Applications note

AllerTool: a web server for predicting allergenicity and allergic cross-reactivity in proteins

Zong Hong Zhang 1 *, Judice L. Y. Koh 1, Guang Lan Zhang 1, Khar Heng Choo 1, Martti T. Tammi 2, and Joo Chuan Tong 1

1 Institute for Infocomm Research, 21 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Singapore 119613
2 Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Zong Hong Zhang, E-mail: zhzhang{at}i2r.a-star.edu.sg


  Abstract

Summary: 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). 10-fold cross-validation results showed that the area under the receiver operating curve (AROC) of SVM models is 0.90 with 86.00% sensitivity at specificity of 86.00%.

Availability: AllerTool is freely available at http://research.i2r.a-star.edu.sg/AllerTool/.

Associate Editor: John Quackenbush
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.