Abstract:

Nowadays, the increased prevalence of food allergy is a public health problem that needs to be solved urgently.
In order to better understand the mechanism of food allergy and find out the reasonable methods for reducing or eliminating
the allergenicity of food allergenic proteins (FAPs), it is important for us to explore the relationship between the structural
stability of FAPs and its allergenicity. In this paper, an overall review of several critical impacting factors (including
disulfide bond, glycosyl, hydrophobic interaction, and hydrogen bond etc.) involved in maintaining the structure of FAPs
and the relationship between structural stability and allergenicity of several common FAPs is presented with the purpose to
provide a general theoretical guidance for reducing or eliminating the allergenicity of FAPs.

Key words: food allergen, structural stability, allergenicity, disulfide bond, glycosyl, hydrophobic interaction, hydrogen bond