Skip to main content
Figure 9 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Figure 9

From: The distribution of CTL epitopes in HIV-1 appears to be random, and similar to that of other proteomes

Figure 9

MHC alleles are clustered over epitope precursors. A single epitope precursor will be predicted to bind somewhere between 0 and 32 HLA molecules (as for 32 MHC alleles there are SMM binding predictors available). In a situation where MHC alleles are randomly distributed over epitope precursors, each MHC allele has a chance to bind to an epitope precursor with the same chance as the specificity of that MHC allele (which for a threshold of IC50 500 nM ranged from 0.5% to 13% of the epitope precursors). Given a random distribution, 18% of the epitope precursors are expected to bind to none of the available MHC alleles, 33% to bind a single MHC allele, and 49% to bind 2 or more MHC alleles (black line). In contrast with the random distribution, the predicted distribution for HIV-1 shows a higher percentage of epitope precursors that bind no epitope precursors, fewer than expected epitope precursors that bind between 1 and 3 MHC alleles, and more than expected epitope precursors that bind to 4 or more MHC alleles (red line). Not only HIV-1, but also HCV, Influenza, and the Human proteome follow this pattern.

Back to article page