Diet is an environmental factor in autoimmune disorders, where the immune system erroneously destroys one’s own tissues. Yet, interactions between diet and autoimmunity remain largely unexplored, particularly the impact of immunogenetics, one’s human leukocyte antigen (HLA) allele make-up, in this interplay. Here, we interrogated animals and plants for the presence of epitopes implicated in human autoimmune diseases. We mapped autoimmune epitope distribution across organisms and determined their tissue expression pattern. Interestingly, diet-derived epitopes implicated in a disease were more likely to bind to HLA alleles associated with that disease than to protective alleles, with visible differences between organisms with similar autoimmune epitope content. We then analyzed an individual’s HLA haplotype, generating a personalized heatmap of potential dietary autoimmune triggers. Our work uncovered differences in autoimmunogenic potential across food sources and revealed differential binding of diet-derived epitopes to autoimmune disease-associated HLA alleles, shedding light on the impact of diet on autoimmunity.

Diet is an environmental factor in autoimmune disorders, where the immune system erroneously destroys one's own tissues. Yet, interactions between diet and autoimmunity remain largely unexplored, particularly the impact of immunogenetics, one's human leukocyte antigen (HLA) allele make-up, in this interplay. Here, we interrogated animals and plants for the presence of epitopes implicated in human autoimmune diseases. We mapped autoimmune epitope distribution across organisms and determined their tissue expression pattern. Interestingly, diet-derived epitopes implicated in a disease were more likely to bind to HLA alleles associated with that disease than to protective alleles, with visible differences between organisms with similar autoimmune epitope content. We then analyzed an individual's HLA haplotype, generating a personalized heatmap of potential dietary autoimmune triggers. Our work uncovered differences in autoimmunogenic potential across food sources and revealed differential binding of dietderived epitopes to autoimmune disease-associated HLA alleles, shedding light on the impact of diet on autoimmunity.

This month's featured article; “Stimulation of luminescence of mycelium of luminous fungus Neonothopanus nambi by ionizing radiation” is a joint contribution from two experimental teams from Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk, Russia. The work demonstrates that a moderate dose of X‐irradiation reproducibly causes a substantial boost in light production from a wide range of samples of fungus with intrinsic bioluminescence. The observed features of this enhancement strongly support involvement of reactive oxygen species in fungal light production. The cover of this issue of Luminescence features images of intrinsic bioluminescence from globules of a luminous fungus N. nambi and kinetics of its stimulation by X‐irradiation.

50 Million people in the United States are estimated to suffer from an autoimmune disease, and this number is predicted to continue growing. Up to 70% of cases could be due to environmental factors. Therefore, an understanding of how diet, likely a major component of the environmental factors described, impacts the immune system merits exploration. We sought to develop a system of comparison between human epitopes implicated in seventy autoimmune diseases and the overlap between them and epitopes found in various commonly consumed animals and plants. The aim of the comparison was to construct a comprehensive database of overlap to provide an index, the Gershteyn-Ferreira index, of potential auto-immunogenicity of various diet-derived proteins. The construction of the database utilized the automation of querying and recording the epitopes with the IEDB (Immune Database and Analysis Resource) system. We created a comprehensive index for twenty-four organisms. Of note, our system personalizes the epitope overlap of the organisms per individual by integrating the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles of the subject and re-running the overlapping epitopes to filter for in silico HLA binding. In addition, we mapped the tissue expression pattern of each epitope to gauge the risk of being exposed to it in the diet. With this new system, Immunodietica, we can determine exact diet-derived epitopes that could be responsible for the pathogenesis or symptom severity of autoimmunity, as well as generate a personalized ‘heat-map’ of potential triggers, the Gershteyn-Ferreira sensitivity passport, for use by autoimmune disease patients.