ENOLASES ARE HIGHLY CONSERVED FUNGAL ALLERGENS

Background: Lack of knowledge of the identity of fungal allergens stil l is a major obstacle for improvement of diagnosis and therapy of alle rgies to moulds. We have therefore further analyzed the allergens of t he two moulds, Alternaria ia alternata and Cladosporium herbarum and f ound that enolases (EC 4.2.1.11) are major allergens, at least of the two fungal species just mentioned. Methods: The enolases of Alternaria and Cladosporium were cloned from cDNA libraries constructed from veg etative cells of the two moulds by immunological screening with sera f rom selected patients allergic to the moulds. The two enolases were ex pressed as recombinant nonfusion proteins and used for determination o f the incidence of allergy to enolase among a cohort of patients. Resu lts: Sequencing of the two enolases showed very close relationships wi th other known fungal enolase sequences. Competition experiments using immunoblots of the recombinant nonfusion proteins showed nearly compl ete identity of the epitopes on both enolases. Serum from a patient re active to Cladosporium enolase reacted equally well with the enolases of Alternaria, Saccharomyces and Candida. About 50% each of the sera f rom patients reactive to Cladosporium and. Alternaria were strongly re active to the recombinant enolases, Conclusions: Enolases are therefor e considered to be highly conserved major fungal allergens.