Penentuan Alergenisitas Protein Gen RB pada Kentang Produk Rekayasa Genetika Berdasarkan Studi Bioinformatika

Genetically modified products (GMP) of Katahdin potato event SP951 containing RB gene resistant to late blight diseases caused by Phytophtora infestans has been developed in the USA. This Katahdin SP951 potato has been crossed with local varieties Atlantic and Granola for its development in Indonesia. In the release process, the GMP potato should be tested for environmental and food safety. One of the food safety assessment needs to be done by determining allergenicity of RB protein whether it is potential as allergen. This research aims to translate the RB gene sequence into RB protein sequence and investigate the potential RB protein as an allergen through bioinformatic studies. This study was performed based on the alignment with available protein allergens from available database websites. The predicted RB protein obtained from 2,913 amino acids RB gene was a 971 amino acids length protein with ATG as a start codon and TAA as a stop codon. Bioinformatics studies of RB protein were performed using www.allergenonline.com, consisted of three searches, i.e. full-length search by FASTA, 80 amino acids search by FASTA, and 8 amino acid exact matches. For full-length alignment search, there are three allergen proteins similar with RB protein sequence with the percentage identity of <35%, while for alignment with 80 amino acids and 8 amino acids did not show similarity with any allergen protein in the database. It can be concluded that RB protein did not have any potential as an allergen, as according to Codex Alimentarius guidelines for full-length alignment search, only protein with identity greater than >50% indicating possible cross reactivity with protein allergen.