Bioinformatics and food allergens.

Bioinformatics can play an important role in developing improved technology for the detection and characterization of food allergens. However, the full realization of this potential will depend on the development of allergen-specific databases as well as improved methods for data mining within these databases. Examples of existing allergen databases and analysis tools are described, as are the most important issues that need to be addressed in the next stage of database development.