Reche Pedro A, Reinherz Ellis L
Department of Immunology, Faculated de Medicina, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
Methods Mol Biol. 2007;409:163-73. doi: 10.1007/978-1-60327-118-9_11.
Identification of peptides that can bind to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules is important for anticipation of T-cell epitopes and for the design of epitope-based vaccines. Population coverage of epitope vaccines is, however, compromised by the extreme polymorphism of MHC molecules, which is in fact the basis for their differential peptide binding. Therefore, grouping of MHC molecules into supertypes according to peptide-binding specificity is relevant for optimizing the composition of epitope-based vaccines. Despite the fact that the peptide-binding specificity of MHC molecules is linked to their specific amino acid sequences, it is unclear how amino sequence differences correlate with peptide-binding specificities. In this chapter, we detail a method for defining MHC supertypes based on the analysis and subsequent clustering of their peptide-binding repertoires.
鉴定能够结合主要组织相容性复合体（MHC）分子的肽段对于预测T细胞表位以及设计基于表位的疫苗非常重要。然而，MHC分子的极端多态性会影响表位疫苗的群体覆盖率，而这种多态性实际上正是其肽段结合差异的基础。因此，根据肽段结合特异性将MHC分子分组为超型，对于优化基于表位的疫苗组成具有重要意义。尽管MHC分子的肽段结合特异性与其特定的氨基酸序列相关，但尚不清楚氨基酸序列差异与肽段结合特异性之间是如何关联的。在本章中，我们详细介绍了一种基于对MHC分子肽段结合库的分析及后续聚类来定义MHC超型的方法。
