A SEMIEMPIRICAL METHOD FOR PREDICTION OF ANTIGENIC DETERMINANTS ON PROTEIN ANTIGENS

Analysis of data from experimentally determined antigenic sites on proteins has revealed that the hydrophobic residues Cys, Leu and Val, if they occur on the surface of a protein, are more likely to be a part of antigenic sites. A semi-empirical method which makes use of physicochemical properties of amino acid residues and their frequencies of occurrence in experimentally known segmental epitopes was developed to predict antigenic determinants on proteins. Application of this method to a large number of proteins has shown that our method can predict antigenic determinants with about 75% accuracy which is better than most of the known methods. This method is based on a single parameter and thus very simple to use.