ABSTRACT
I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION As with most biochemical disciplines, the history of allergen nomenclature dates back to the time when allergens were fractionated using a variety of "classical" biochemical separation techniques and the active (most allergenic) fraction was usually named according to the whim of the investigator. For allergens, this dates to the 1940s through the late 1950s, when early attempts were made to purify pollen and house dust allergens using phenol extraction, salt precipitation, and electrophoretic techniques. In the early 1960s, ion exchange and gel filtration media were introduced and ragweed "antigen E" was the first allergen to be purified. This allergen, named by King and Norman, was one of five precipitin lines (labeled A-E) that reacted with rabbit polyclonal antibodies to ragweed in Ouchterlony immunodiffusion tests. Following purification, precipitin line E, or "antigen E" was shown to be a potent allergen (1). Later, Marsh, working in Cambridge, England, isolated an important allergen from rye grass pollen (Lolium perenne) and used the name "Rye 1" to indicate that this was the first allergen purified from this species (2). In the 1970s, the field advanced
apace and many allergens were purified from ragweed, rye grass, insect venoms, and other sources. The field was led by the laboratory of the late Dr. David Marsh, who had moved to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. There ragweed allergens Ra3, Ra4, RaS, and Ra6 and rye grass allergens Rye 2 and Rye 3 were isolated and used for immunological and genetic studies of hay fever. At the same time, Ohman identified a major cat allergen (Cat-I) (3) and Elsayed purified allergen M from codfish (4).
