Anaphylactic reactions are of great importance in clinical allergology. Measurement of allergen concentration in foods is helpful to estimate their allergenicity. In this study, a sandwich ELISA for the evaluation of profilin concentration in fruits was designed. A mixture of monoclonal antibodies against saffron profilin was used as a capture antibody. The recombinant melon profilin was expressed in Escherichia coli BL-21 and applied as a standard antigen along with different fruit extracts to measure their profilin concentration. Furthermore, a polyclonal antibody against the recombinant melon profilin was produced and applied as the secondary antibody. In this way, the profilin concentration of various fruits including banana, tomato, kiwi, mulberry, cantaloupe, peach, watermelon and zucchini was measured. The results showed that the designed ELISA had a sensitivity threshold of about 1 ng/ml for the melon profilin and it is therefore suggested for determination of profilin concentration in other fruits.

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris L.), family Labiateae, is fairly grown wildly throughout Iran. The essential oil of the aerial parts of T. vulgaris, cultivated in the Khorasan province, North East of Iran, was prepared. The chemical composition of the oil was identified using GC-MS. Twenty-one compounds were identified. The major components of the oil were carvacrol (57.3 %), linalool (11.8 %) and thymol (10.67 %). The amounts of the two main components, carvacrol and thymol, were compared with the results reported from other countries.