Allergen Targets

Peanut

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Food Matrices

Chocolate

Chocolate dessert

Microfluidic separation coupled to mass spectrometry for quantification of peanut allergens in a complex food matrix

Sayers, R.L., Gethings, L.A., Lee, V., Balasundaram, A., Johnson, P.J., Marsh, J.A., Wallace, A., Brown, H., Rogers, A., Langridge, J.I., Mills, E.C.

Journal of Proteome Research (2017),  DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.7b00714

Abstract

Peanut is an important food allergen but cannot currently be reliably detected and quantified in processed foods at low levels. Three mg protein/Kg is increasingly being used as a reference dose above which precautionary allergen labeling (PAL) is applied to food products. Two exemplar matrices (chocolate dessert and chocolate bar) were prepared and incurred at 0, 3, 10 or 50 mg/Kg peanut protein using a commercially available lightly roasted peanut flour ingredient. After simple buffer extraction employing an acid labile detergent, multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) experiments were used to assess matrix effects on detection of a set of seven peptide targets derived from peanut allergens using either conventional or microfluidic chromatographic separation prior to mass spectrometry. Microfluidic separation provided greater sensitivity and increased ionisation efficiency at low levels. Individual monitored transitions were detected in consistent ratios across the dilution series performed, independent of ...