Structure and function of several allergenic animal and plant proteins.

The authors try to provide a number of theoretical and experimental arguments in favour of the hypothesis of a possible relationship between the structure, function and allergenicity of certain animal or plant proteins. The transport function or enzymatic activity of certain proteins can be assumed to have an effect on the membrane of immunologically competent cells which could endow them with a greater capacity to preferentially select the profiles of Th2 lymphocytes, inducers of the IgE response. The distinction between immunogenicity and allergenicity is currently exclusively based on the genetic capacity of the recipient to produce IgE and the environmental conditions which allow this IgE response. At the level molecular, structural homologies between various allergenic molecules do not inevitably induce crossed antigenicity.