Yeast Surface Display Methodology for the Characterization of Food Allergens In Situ

High throughput allergen characterization is often based on phage display technique which is limited by the constraints of a prokaryotic expression system such as potential loss of conformational epitopes and lack of post-translational modifications. Replacing the phage display platform with a yeast surface display system could accelerate the immunological characterization of complex structured allergens. Yeast surface display is a powerful technique that allows faster immunochemical characterization of allergens in situ without the need for protein purification. Yeast surface display offers an alternative that could lead to the improvement of standard immunodiagnostic and immunotherapeutic approaches. In this chapter, we describe a protocol on yeast surface display for the characterization of plant-derived food allergens using actinidin (Act d 1), a major kiwifruit allergen, as a model system.