Title

A HLA-DRB supertype chart with potential overlapping peptide binding function

Authors

Arumugam Mohanapriya^1,2, Satish Nandagond¹, Paul Shapshak³, Uma Kangueane¹, Pandjassarame Kangueane^{1, 2 *}

Affiliation

¹Biomedical Informatics, Pondicherry 607 402, India; ²VITU, Vellore, Tamil Nadu 632 014, India; ³Division of Infectious Disease & International Health Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Medicine USF Health Tampa Gen Hospital, ¹ Tampa Gen Circle, Room G318, Tampa FL 33606

Email

kangueane@bioinformation.net

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received November16, 2009; Revised December 07, 2009; Accepted January16, 2010; Published January 20, 2010

Abstract

HLA-DRB alleles are class II alleles that are associated with CD4+ T-cell immune response. DRB alleles are polymorphic and currently there are about 622 named in the IMGT/HLA sequence database. Each allele binds short peptides with high sensitivity and specificity. However, it has been suggested that majority of HLA alleles can be covered within few HLA supertypes, where different members of a supertype bind similar peptides showing distinct repertoires. Definition of DRB supertypes using binding data is limited to few (about 29) known alleles (< 5% of all known DRB alleles). Hence, we describe a strategy using structurally defined virtual pockets to group all known DRB alleles with regard to their overlapping peptide binding specificity.

Keywords

HLA, supertype, class II, peptide binding, overlapping function

Citation

Mohanapriya et al., Bioinformation, 4 (7) 300-309, 2010

Edited by

P. Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.