Predicting the allergenicity of legume proteins using a PBMC gene expression assay_Pilot experiment

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. PBMCs from four donors were stimulated with 10 μg/mL or 50 μg/mL 7S globulins from white bean (phaseolin) and soybean (Gly m 5) for 4h in the pilot experiment (five replicates per donor, 2 outlier fastq-files were removed).