The right timing for shrimp tropomyosins.

erally referred to as shellfish. Shellfish allergy, including severe acute hypersensitivity reactions and life-threatening or even fatal anaphylaxis, has been considered one of the major contributors to food allergy [3] . Sicherer et al. [4] conducted a nationwide, cross-sectional, random telephone survey which censed 14,948 individuals, to estimate the prevalence of seafood allergy in the USA. The study revealed that shellfish allergy was encountered in 2.2% of the population, corresponding to more than 6 million Americans with this condition, and that it was almost 5 times more common among adults as compared to children. It has been appreciated that allergies to both fish and shellfish are usually not outgrown [5] . Interestingly, Ayuso et al. [6] showed that children with shrimp allergy recognized more shrimp proteins and individual peptides than adults, and that the intensity of IgE binding was also greater in children compared to adult patients, suggesting that clinical reactivity might decrease over time. The muscle protein tropomyosin is considered to be responsible for most of the allergenic activity of shrimp [3, 7] . Tropomyosin is also an important allergen in mollusks, as well as in other invertebrates including dust mites, cockroach, and parasites ( Ascaris lumbricoides, Anisakis simplex, filarial species, and others), raising important issues about clinical implications of IgE crossIt is well known that the timing of egg hatching for many marine organisms is key to species survival because the time span in which larvae are able to survive in the deep ocean is very short. If egg hatching is too early, they starve before the spring phytoplankton blooms, missing their food source. If hatching is delayed, they also miss the bloom. In most of the North Atlantic, shrimp eggs hatch just a few days before the spring bloom. Peter Koeller et al. [1] showed that the North Atlantic shrimp species Pandalus borealis has adapted its reproductive cycle very well to match hatching times with local temperatures and seasonal phytoplankton dynamics in different ecological regimes throughout its wide latitudinal range (42–80°N). Although this strategy is susceptible to interannual oceanographic variability and long-term climatic changes, it has not prevented P. borealis from being the most commercially important coldwater shrimp species [2] . In allergy diagnosis, P. borealis extract is a component of in vitro and in vivo diagnostic testing reagents. The increased consumption of seafood worldwide, due to its high nutritive value and the promotion of a healthy diet, has been accompanied by more frequent reports of adverse reactions among consumers and also among processors of seafood. Seafood includes fish, Crustacea (shrimp, crab, and lobster), and mollusks (squid, oysters, scallop, clams, and snails), with the latest two phyla genPublished online: November 21, 2012