**Author details**

Krzysztof Zienkiewicz, Estefanía García-Quirós, Juan de Dios Alché, María Isabel Rodríguez-García and Antonio Jesús Castro *Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology of Plants, Estación Experimental del Zaidín, C.S.I.C., Granada, Spain* 

## **Acknowledgement**

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) (ERDF-cofinanced projects AGL2008-00517, BFU2011-22779 and PIE-200840I186) and the Junta de Andalucía (ERDF-cofinanced projects P2010-CVI5767 and P2010-AGR6274). The authors thank Dr. Fernando Florido (Allergy Unit, Hospital Clínico San Cecilio, Granada, Spain) for kindly providing the sera from allergic patients. K. Zienkiewicz thanks the CSIC for providing JAEdoc grant funding.

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**Chapter 4** 

© 2012 Morales et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2012 Morales et al., licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Involvement of Climatic Factors in the Allergen** 

Olive allergen concentrations in the pollen grain are critical in allergic response of atopic patients. Existing evidence shows that climatic factors can influence pollen allergen content. To date, the influences of temperature and precipitations over the content of birch and olive pollens in their respective major allergens have been analyzed. Bet v 1, the major allergen of birch pollen, increased its expression (Buters et al. 2008) and presented a higher allergenicity (Ahlholm et al. 1998) while temperatures were elevated. Differently, the content in the major olive pollen allergen Ole e 1 showed no apparent correlation with either temperatures or precipitations (Fernández Caldas et al. 2007). However, a positive correlation between total allergenicity and rainfall occurring in winter months was found. This correlation was not

Our aim was to extend the observations carried out in olive pollen, by analyzing the effects of climate parameters over the expression of four olive pollen allergens. Using a recently developed multiplex western blotting system for the assessment of allergenic molecules (Morales et al. 2012), we have simultaneously detected and quantified two major (Ole e 1 and Ole e 9) and two minor allergens (Ole e 2 and Ole e 5) in the pollen extracts from seven olive cultivars collected along 4-7 consecutive years. The considered climatic variables included temperature, precipitation, number of rain days and humidity. Data were provided by the Spanish network for the temporal observation of ecosystems (REDOTE). Correlations between the allergen contents (both individually and all inclusive) and climate variables were studied by applying Spearman correlation tests. Results showed significant variations in the expression of the four allergens in the seven cultivars throughout the years of the analysis. All these positive correlations corresponded exactly to the period of time starting the winter prior to each flowering period to the end of period (this is, December

**Expression in Olive Pollen** 

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

analyzed independently for each pollen allergen.

from the previous year to June).

María Isabel Rodríguez-García and Juan de Dios Alché

Sonia Morales, Antonio Jesús Castro,

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/50077

**1. Introduction** 
