In silico analysis of mycobacterim tuberculosis proteins to understand their role in susceptibility and protection

Abstract

Aim: To analyze the epitopes derived from protective and TB pathologic antigen with respect to known protective and susceptible Class I HLA alleles. Method: The sequences of protective and susceptible antigens were first analyzed using bioinformatic tool CTLpred. The top scoring three epitopes from this were then used to analyse their Class I HLA restriction employing the Propred matrix. Result: We found that an increased number of epitopes of antigens involved in pathogenesis were predicted to associate with susceptible alleles than for protective alleles. Conclusion: For selecting an epitope for vaccine design it is not only important to study its ability to induce the protective cytokine IFN-γ but also the cytokine like IL-10 involved in pathogenesis, in the context of a specific HLA class I molecule.