Computational Methods in Linear B-cell Epitope Prediction

B-cell Epitope Prediction

When a living organism encounters a pathogenic virus ormicrobe, the B cells of the immune system recognize the pathogen’s antigens by their membrane-bound immunoglobulin receptors and, in response, produce antibodies specific to these antigens. The term antigen refers to any entity—a cell, a macromolecular assembly, or a molecule—that may be bound by either a B-cell receptor or an antibody mole...

Recent advances in B-cell epitope prediction methods

Identification of epitopes that invoke strong responses from B-cells is one of the key steps in designing effective vaccines against pathogens. Because experimental determination of epitopes is expensive in terms of cost, time, and effort involved, there is an urgent need for computational methods for reliable identification of B-cell epitopes. Although several computational tools for predictin...

Fundamentals and Methods for T- and B-Cell Epitope Prediction

Adaptive immunity is mediated by T- and B-cells, which are immune cells capable of developing pathogen-specific memory that confers immunological protection. Memory and effector functions of B- and T-cells are predicated on the recognition through specialized receptors of specific targets (antigens) in pathogens. More specifically, B- and T-cells recognize portions within their cognate antigens...

Benchmarking B cell epitope prediction: underperformance of existing methods.

Sequence profiling is used routinely to predict the location of B-cell epitopes. In the postgenomic era, the need for reliable epitope prediction is clear. We assessed 484 amino acid propensity scales in combination with ranges of plotting parameters to examine exhaustively the correlation of peaks and epitope location within 50 proteins mapped for polyclonal responses. After examining more tha...

prediction of linear and conformational b cell epitope of her2 ecd for monoclonal antibody development using immunoinformatic methods