Food Allergens

Waters offers a comprehensive range of analytical system solutions, software, and services for scientists. Liquid Chromatography. Mass Spectrometry. Waters is the leading provider of lab equipment, supplies and software for scientists across the world. Easily research and order everything your lab needs! Waters offers a comprehensive range of analytical system solutions, software, and services for scientists. Liquid Chromatography. Mass Spectrometry. Waters is the leading provider of lab equipment, supplies and software for scientists across the world. Easily research and order everything your lab needs!

Food Allergens

Allergens can unintentionally find their way into food from cross-contamination during production and, when not declared on the label or menu, can lead to adverse immunological response often with tragic consequences. Application of risk-based approaches to managing allergens in foods requires access to good quality data from clinical studies to determine “safe” levels of allergens in foods as well as analytical tools that are able to quantify allergenic food protein.

Waters LC-MS technologies enable scientists to develop workflows to identify and determine levels of incurred allergens in raw ingredients and processed foodstuffs, ensuring accurate product labeling and consumer safety.

Discovery of Novel Low Abundance Allergenic Proteins

Allergenic proteins can be identified using “bottom up” proteomics using LC-QTofMS: a comprehensive approach to the identification and selection of proteotypic peptides, robust to food processing. Utilizing ion mobility with the SYNAPT XS platform provides enhanced specificity and therefore improved confidence of identifications returned, even in the presence of complex matrices, such as processed food samples.

Determination of the Amount of Allergens in Foodstuffs

Highly sensitive LC-MS/MS systems such as the XEVO TQ-XS provide a highly selective and sensitive method for the accurate detection and quantification of multiple allergens in a single analysis. Strategies combining standard addition and labeled peptide correction are able to detect traces of the allergen proteins in the ‘mg allergen proteins per kg food product’ range.

Sample Preparation and Chromatography Solutions

RapiGest is a patented anionic surfactant that accelerates the in-solution production of peptides generated by proteases, such as trypsin and has been shown to be optimal for extraction of protein from peanuts. Extracts are purified using either Oasis HLB or MCX SPE cartridges prior to chromatographic separation. Microfluidic separation using Ikey provided greater sensitivity and increased ionization efficiency at low levels.

Streamlining the Informatic Workflows

Progenesis QI for proteomics is discovery analysis software that provides you with a way to efficiently quantify and identify thousands of proteins from complex samples. Protein identifications are obtained by searching a sequence database of the relevant food ingredient proteome present in search engines and database. Data from targeted analyses can be processed in either Targetlynx or Skyline including quantification using of isotope-labeled peptides.