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Integrating epitope data into the emerging web of biomedical knowledge resources

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 7, pages 485–490 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

The recognition of immune epitopes is an important molecular mechanism of the vertebrate immune system to discriminate between self and non-self. Increasing amounts of data on immune epitopes are becoming available due to technological advances in epitope-mapping techniques and the availability of genomic information for pathogens. Organizing this data poses a challenge that is similar to the successful effort that was required to organize genomic data, which needed the establishment of centralized databases that complement the primary literature to make the data readily accessible and searchable by researchers. As described in this Innovation article, the Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource aims to achieve the same for the more complex and context-dependent information on immune epitopes, and to integrate this data with existing and emerging knowledge resources.

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Figure 1: Generating a formal ontology for the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB).
Figure 2: Querying and reporting epitope information.
Figure 3: Homology mapping of an epitope into its three-dimensional source protein structure.
Figure 4: Distribution of influenza A virus epitope data.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Ponomarenko and P. Bourne at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, who developed the Homology Mapping tool. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, USA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Vaccine Discovery, Bjoern Peters and Alessandro Sette are at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, 9420 Athena Circle, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.,

    Bjoern Peters & Alessandro Sette

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  1. Bjoern Peters
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  2. Alessandro Sette
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Correspondence to Alessandro Sette.

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FURTHER INFORMATION

Alessandro Sette's homepage

AntiJen

ΦIMM

Gene Ontology

HCV databases

HIV databases

IEDB

IMGT

La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology

MHCBN

NIAID Biodefense Research

Ontology for Biomedical Investigations

SYFPEITHI

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Peters, B., Sette, A. Integrating epitope data into the emerging web of biomedical knowledge resources. Nat Rev Immunol 7, 485–490 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nri2092

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