Design, optimisation and functional relevance of in silico tools for the study of coeliac disease

Abstract

Peptide-MHC interaction is a crucial pre-requisite for the recognition of antigen by T cells. It has long been recognised that peptides with a high affinity for MHC molecules are more likely to elicit a pronounced T cell response. In order to reduce the experimental burden in studies of immunogenic protein fragments, many researchers have developed methods to predict the affinity of a peptide for a chosen MHC molecule. It was elected to develop such methods for the prediction of peptide binding to the coeliac disease associated MHC class II molecule HLA- DQ2.