1: Immunol Lett. 1993 Apr;36(1):83-99.

Correlation between the location of antigenic sites and the prediction of turns
in proteins.

Pellequer JL, Westhof E, Van Regenmortel MH.

UPR Structure des Macromolécules Biologiques et Mécanismes de Reconnaissance,
CNRS, Strasbourg, France.

In the present study, we developed new turn scales based on the occurrence of
amino acids at each of the four positions of a turn using a structural database
comprised of 87 proteins. We found that the scales correctly predicted a fraction
of the turn regions in proteins with approximately 80% confidence. We used the
turn scales for predicting the location of antigenic sites in proteins. The
method was developed with the specific aim of predicting only a few peaks for
each protein (two or three). We found that it leads to a high level of accurate
prediction (70% of correct prediction of known epitopes). Our method should be
useful for selecting protein regions to be synthesized in order to produce
anti-peptide antibodies cross-reacting with the parent protein.

PMID: 7688347 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]