The cupin superfamily is a diverse superfamily of proteins named after its conserved barrel domain (cupa being the Latin term for a small barrel). The superfamily includes a wide variety of enzymes as well as non-enzymatic seed storage proteins. Members of the superfamily play a role in allergy, especially seed storage proteins like 7S and 11S globulins, also known as vicilins and legumins, respectively. These proteins can be found at high concentrations in seeds of both mono- and dicotyledonous plants and are an important component of the normal human diet. History Thomas Burr Osborne at the end of the 19th century was the first person to systematically study seed storage proteins by their solubility characteristics. He established 4 classes of proteins: water-soluble albumins; salt soluble globulins: vicilin—typically having sedimentation coefficients, S values (a measure of the protein mass determined by sedimentation equilibrium ultracentrifugation) of about 7 Svedberg units (hence the common name 7S globulin) and legumin (11S); alcohol/water-soluble—cereal—prolamines; and a fourth class, glutelins, of difficultly soluble proteins no longer recognized and now considered low solubility prolamin or globulin storage proteins . Gluten consists of a mixture of prolamins: 'glutenin' and 'gliadin'. Osborne and his Yale colleague Lafayette Mendel are considered the 'founders' of the modern science of nutrition. Earlier, the fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib.) deBary was the first oxalic acid (oxalate), secreting organism to be described as early as 1886 in Botan. Z. by A. de Barry. However, since oxalate secreting fungi are not a major threat to crop cereals no studies of this interaction were made for almost 100 years. In the early 1980s a protein dubbed 'germin' was identified in germinating wheat embryos; and in the early 1990s (1992) it was found to be an enzyme having oxalate oxidase (OXO) activity converting an oxalate substrate into carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide. This latter-day discovery of 'germin' was soon followed by the discovery of the 'cupin superfamily' of proteins. Classification Legumin and vicilin share a common evolutionary ancestor, namely, a vicilin-like protein in a fern-spore which also exhibits some characteristics of legumin. Each of these proteins contains equivalent 'subunits' indicating an evolution from a single-gene ancestor which has been duplicated during evolution. It was suggested that "germin", {first found and only known to occur in the "true cereals": barley, corn, oat, rice, and wheat} a plant enzyme, oxalate oxidase 'one-very-tough-little- protein' was such an ancestor. This hypothesis stimulated a