Table 1.

Analysis of allergen-IgE antibody interactions

Approach	Antibody clonality	What is identified	Example
Test IgE binding to synthetic peptides or small fragments on cellulose or microarrays or bead-based assays	Polyclonal or monoclonal	Linear epitopes	47–67
Site-directed mutagenesis in peptides	Polyclonal or monoclonal	Specific antibody binding residues in linear epitopes	69
Phage display technology		Mimotopes	73,74
Testing antibody binding to chimeras or hybrid molecules that result from grafting allergen surface areas onto non-allergenic homologous proteins	Polyclonal	Allergen surface patches containing conformational (or linear) epitopes	75,76
Nuclear magnetic resonance (hydrogen/deuterium exchange memory; methyl-labeled allergen in complex with mAb)	Monoclonal	Identification of area containing a conformational epitope	77,78
X-ray crystallography of allergen with an IgG mAb construct as surrogate of human IgE, followed by site-directed mutagenesis analysis	Monoclonal	Identification of residues involved in IgG and IgE antibody binding	70
X-ray crystallography of allergen in complex with a human IgE mAb construct	Monoclonal	Detailed structure of the allergen-IgE interaction	80