Evaluation of wheat content with monoclonal antibodies against lipid transfer protein

This work was performed to develop evaluation system for wheat content especially in fermented foods. Non-specific lipid transfer protein (LTP) in wheat flour reacted with IgE in sera drawn from food allergic patients. A sandwich-type of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed with mouse monoclonal antibodies raised against LTP purified from wheat flour. This ELISA showed a practical working range of 3-500 pg/mL and 0.2% cross-reactivity to rye LTP and no cross-reactivity to barley, adlay and oat. The proper determination of wheat content is known to be difficult by using commercially available ELISA for gliadin, because of its unnegligible cross-reactivity to rye and the proteolysis of gliadin in fermented foods. In contrast, LTP could be determined even in fermented foods such as wheat-supplemented beer, soy sauce and soybean paste. Thus, this ELISA for LTP can be proposed as the special system for the determination of wheat content in fermented foods.