Mapping B-Cell Epitopes for Nonspecific Lipid Transfer Proteins of Legumes Consumed in India and Identification of Critical Residues Responsible for IgE Binding

Nonspecific lipid transfer proteins (nsLTPs) have been categorized as panallergens and display widespread occurrence across plant-kingdom. Present study, investigated B-cell epitopes for LTPs from chickpea, mung-bean, cowpea, pigeon-pea, and soybean via in silico methods. In-silico predicted regions were evaluated for epitope-conservancy and property-based peptide similarity search by different allergen databases. Additionally, the in-silico predicted regions were compared with the experimentally validated epitopes of peach-LTP. Sequence-homology studies showed that chickpea and mung-bean LTPs shared significant homology, i.e., >70% and >60%, respectively, with other LTP allergens from lentil, garden-pea, peanut, etc. Phylogenetic-analysis also showed chickpea and mung-bean LTPs to be closely related to allergenic LTPs from lentil and peanut, respectively. Epitope-conservation analysis showed that two of the predicted B-cell epitopic regions in chickpea and mung-bean LTPs were also conserved in other allergenic LTPs from peach, peanut, garden-pea, lentil, and green-bean, and might serve as conserved B-cell epitopes of the LTP protein family. Property-distance index values for chickpea and mung-bean LTPs also showed that most of the epitopes shared similarity with the reported allergens like-lentil, peanut, apple, plum, tomato, etc. Present findings, may be explored for identification of probable allergenicity of novel LTPs, on the basis of the reported conserved B-cell epitopes, responsible for potential cross-reactivity.