Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017:1484:255-264.
doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-6406-2_17.

In Silico Prediction of Linear B-Cell Epitopes on Proteins

Yasser El-Manzalawy  1 , Drena Dobbs  2 , Vasant G Honavar  3
Affiliations

In Silico Prediction of Linear B-Cell Epitopes on Proteins

Yasser El-Manzalawy et al. Methods Mol Biol. 2017.

Abstract

Antibody-protein interactions play a critical role in the humoral immune response. B-cells secrete antibodies, which bind antigens (e.g., cell surface proteins of pathogens). The specific parts of antigens that are recognized by antibodies are called B-cell epitopes. These epitopes can be linear, corresponding to a contiguous amino acid sequence fragment of an antigen, or conformational, in which residues critical for recognition may not be contiguous in the primary sequence, but are in close proximity within the folded protein 3D structure.Identification of B-cell epitopes in target antigens is one of the key steps in epitope-driven subunit vaccine design, immunodiagnostic tests, and antibody production. In silico bioinformatics techniques offer a promising and cost-effective approach for identifying potential B-cell epitopes in a target vaccine candidate. In this chapter, we show how to utilize online B-cell epitope prediction tools to identify linear B-cell epitopes from the primary amino acid sequence of proteins.

Keywords: Antibody-protein interaction; B-cell epitope prediction; Epitope mapping; Epitope prediction; Linear B-cell epitope prediction.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Propensity scale profiles for the Ebola virus GP protein (UniProt ID Q05320) generated using (a) BepiPred, (b) surface accessibility, (c) flexibility, (d) antigenicity. Regions with scores above the red line are more likely to contain linear B-cell epitopes
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Submission page of BCPREDS web server available at: http://ailab.ist.psu.edu/bcpred/predict.html
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Linear B-cell epitopes predicted using three different linear B-cell epitope predictors currently supported by BCPREDS: BCPred, AAP, and FBCPred. Bold residues indicate epitope residues predicted by at least two methods
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Abbas AK, Lichtman AH, Pillai S (2014) Cellular and molecular immunology: with student consult online access Elsevier Health Sciences, Philadelphia, PA
    1. Abbott WM, Damschroder MM, Lowe DC (2014) Current approaches to fine mapping of antigen–antibody interactions. Immunology 142(4):526–535 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Reineke U, Schutkowski M (2009) Epitope mapping protocols, vol 524, Methods in molecular biology Humana Press, New York - PubMed
    1. EL-Manzalawy Y, Honavar V (2010) Recent advances in B-cell epitope prediction methods. Immunome Res Suppl 2:S2 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Walter G (1986) Production and use of anti-bodies against synthetic peptides. J Immunol Methods 88(2):149–161 - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources