HEPTAD: HAPTIC2-like Epitope Prediction Tool for Antigen with Disulfide

Use HEPTAD to estimate affinity of paratopes for cognate disordered peptidic antigens that each contain exactly one pair of disulfide-linked cysteine residues, allowing for variable-length B-cell epitopes with temperature-dependent conformational flexibility (cf. HAPTIC2).

Notes:

1. HEPTAD estimates epitope-paratope binding affinity as dissocation-constant values for variable-length candidate epitopes of disordered peptidic antigen sequences with temperature-dependent conformational flexibility that each contain exactly one pair of disulfide-linked cysteine residues (cf. HAPTIC2).
2. Paratope-footprint radius (in Å) determines maximum length of rigid poly-L-proline II (PPII) helical segment (assuming 3.1 Å rise per residue) in a candidate epitope.
3. Temperature of immunization is normal body temperature for immunized animal species (e.g., 310.15 K = 37°C for human/mouse [default] or 312.35 K = 39.2°C for rabbit).
4. Temperature of immunoassay is for experiment to measure epitope-paratope binding affinity, with default value assumed for ambient/room temperature of 298.15K = 25°C.
5. Input must be provided as peptidic sequence data in FASTA format using only the 20 standard amino-acid residue codes (ACDEFGHIKLMNPQRSTVWY), such that only upper-case letter codes are considered in generating candidate epitopes while lower-case letter codes (e.g., introduced by HIP to represent excluded residues) are neglected.
6. Each input sequence is partitioned into candidate epitopes (i.e., tripeptide and longer segments).
7. Excessively long candidate epitopes (i.e., comprising excessively long run/s of consecutive proline residues and/or deemed too bulky to fit paratope) are excluded from analysis.
8. Candidate epitopes are ranked by estimated affinity at temperature of immunization, such that top-ranking candidate epitope is identified as predicted most immunodominant epitope.