| Summary: | Fish are the largest and most diverse group of vertebrates. Fish are also a part of the eight food groups that cause the majority of IgE mediated food reactions. Detection tools for fish allergens and fish allergy diagnostics are however limited due to the great diversity of fish species, despite fish allergy and its major allergen parvalbumin being well documented. Currently the best treatment strategy for fish allergy is avoidance. The most commonly studied fish are cod, carp and Atlantic salmon as they are frequently consumed in North America and Europe. However much less is known about fish allergens in the Australasian region, although fish is widely consumed in this region. The major fish allergen is parvalbumin, a small calcium binding protein found in the muscles of vertebrates which are the biggest group of animal derived food allergens, part of the EF Hand domain protein family. Fish can express multiple parvalbumin isoforms which may differ greatly in amino acid sequence that further complicates the diagnosis of fish allergy and the detection of these allergens. In this PhD thesis, fish allergen detection methods will be evaluated in addition to the characterisation of novel fish allergens from the Australasian region to improve current diagnostic and detection methods and future development of immunotherapies for fish allergy sufferers. Firstly, the evaluation of the cross-reactivity of parvalbumin from a variety of bony and cartilaginous fish, from the Asia-Pacific region was performed with the monoclonal anti-parvalbumin antibody PARV-19. The presence of monomeric and oligomeric parvalbumin was demonstrated in all fish analysed, except for gummy shark, which is a cartilaginous fish. Heat processing of this allergen greatly affected its antibody reactivity. While heating caused a reduction in antibody reactivity to multimeric forms of parvalbumins for most bony fish, a complete loss of reactivity was observed for all cartilaginous fish except for the elephant shark. Molecular analysis demonstrated ...
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