SDAP ING IT UP
http://129.109.73.75/SDAP/
The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston has developed a website containing a searchable database of allergy-causing proteins and bioinformatics tools for performing structural studies on allergens and the characterisation of their epitopes - protein parts that trigger immune reactions. The Structural Database of Allergenic Proteins (SDAP) could help doctors and researchers identify substances that may cause a reaction in someone with allergies by searching for similarities to the allergy-causing epitope.
Werner Braun, who led the project, said, "We hope researchers will be able to look for allergens related to what they are working with and get more precise information on what the allergen is doing functionally in patients."
The database contains the sequence, structure and function of hundreds of proteins, but only 40 have known epitopes, even fewer with known three-dimensional structures. Braun and his team hope to create three-dimensional models of more epitopes as soon as they are available.