Allergy Bioinformatics

The book mainly introduces the bioinformatics resources and tools available for the study of allergenicity. Allergy symptoms affect more than 25% of the population in industrialized countries. Biotechnology is rapidly developing, which involves the introduction of novel proteins into drugs or foods, and those proteins can be allergenic. It is essential to avoid transferring a gene that encodes a major allergenic protein (from any source) into a drug/food crop that did not previously contain that protein. To accurately discriminate candidate genes from allergens before transferring those into a drug/food organism would aid preventive efforts to curb the rising incidence of allergies. Several specialized public databases have been created in response to increasing allergen data. The resources provided by these databases have paved the way for the creation of specialized bioinformatics tools that allow for the prediction of allergenicity. The book would be useful for biologists, biomedical informatics scientists, and clinicians, etc. Dr. Ailin Tao is the chief of Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, Principal Investigator of the State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University; Dr. Prof. Eyal Raz is a Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA; Valenta Rudolf is the Head of the Division of Immunopathology, Department of Pathophysiology and Allergy Research, Center for Pathophysiology, Infectiology and Immunology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.