Peptide binding to MHC class I molecules: Implications for antigenic peptide prediction

Abstract

The human mayor histocompatibility complex class I molecule HLA-A2 preferentially binds peptides that contain Leu at P2 and Val or Leu at the C terminus. The other amino acids in the peptide also contribute to binding positively or negatively. It is possible to estimate the binding stability of HLA-A2 complexes containing particular peptides by applying coefficients, deduced from a large amount of binding data, that quantify the relative contribution of each amino acid at each position. In this review, we describe the molecular basis for these coefficients and demonstrate that estimates of binding stability based on the coefficients are generally concordant with experimental measurements of ..