Allergens

An allergy is a body's hypersensitive reaction to a normally harmless substance. These substances are called allergens. In the body of an allergic person, the immune system reacts abnormally when an allergen is brought into contact or absorbed by their body. The immune system treats the allergen as a dangerous invader - the same reaction that normally helps protect us from infectious diseases. As a result, your body's white blood cells produce antibodies, which, treating the substance as a harmful invader, causing the body to release histamines. Histamines in turn cause the symptoms normally associated with common allergies, such as sneezing, watery eyes, and itching - as well as potentially much worse and more hazardous responses.

It is still not known why some persons are reacting allergic on these substances and some not. What make them to be allergens? For most of the plant proteins it is still not known what their physiological is.

Our research is concerned with the determination of structural and dynamical properties of allergens in solution. Techniques used in course of these investigations are NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), molecular biology methods, circular dichroism, fluorescence spectroscopy and other bioanalytical methods.