Genome-Wide in silico Analysis Expanding the Potential Allergen Repertoire of Mango (Mangifera indica L.)

The potential of a protein to cause an allergic reaction is often assessed using a variety of computational techniques. Leveraging advances in high-throughput protein sequence data coupled with in silico or computational methods can be used to systematically analyze large proteomes for allergenic potential. Despite its widespread consumption and growing clinical reports of hypersensitivity, the full extent of their allergenicity is yet unknown. In this study, for the first time, we conducted a genome-wide in silico analysis by analyzing a total of 54,010 protein sequences to identify the complete spectrum of potential mango allergens. These proteins were analyzed using various bioinformatics tools to predict their allergenic potential based on sequence similarity, structural features, and known allergen databases. In addition to the known mango allergens, including chitinase (Man i1), pathogenesis-related (PR) protein (Man i2), and profilin (Man i4), our findings demonstrated that several isoforms of cysteine protease, legumin B-like, 11S globulin, vicilin, thaumatin-like protein, non-specific lipid-transfer protein (LTP), and ervatamin-B family proteins exhibited strong allergenic potential, with >80% 3D epitope identity, >70% linear 80 aa window identity, and matching with >80 known allergens. Thus, a genome-wide in silico study provided a comprehensive profile of the possible mango allergome, which could help identify the low allergen-containing mango cultivars and aid in the development of accurate assays for variety-specific allergic reactions.