Combining computational modelling, structural biology and immunology to understand Antigen processing
Competition between peptides for binding and presentation by MHC class I molecules decides the immune response to foreign or tumor antigens. Many previous studies have attempted to classify the immunogenicity of a peptide using machine learning algorithms to predict the affinity, or half-life, of the peptide binding to MHC. However immunopeptidome analyses have shown a poor correlation between sequence based predictions and the abundance on the cell surface of the experimentally identified peptides. Such metrics are, for instance, only comparable when the abundance of competing peptides can be accurately quantified. We have developed a model for predicting the relative presentation of competing peptides that takes into account off-rate, source protein abundance and turnover and cofactor-assisted MHC assembly with peptides. This model is mechanism based so that it can accommodate complex biology phenomena such as inflammation, up or downregulation of peptide loading complex chaperones, appearance of a mutanome. We have used aspects of the model to drive an investigation of the precise molecular mechanism of peptide selection by MHC I and its associated intracellular cofactors.
Date: 17 May 2019, 14:00 (Friday, 3rd week, Trinity 2019)
Venue: Mathematical Institute, Woodstock Road OX2 6GG
Venue Details: L3
Speaker: Prof Tim Elliott (University of Southampton)
Organising department: Mathematical Institute
Organiser: Sara Jolliffe (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: Sara.Jolliffe@maths.ox.ac.uk
Host: Philip Maini (University of Oxford)
Part of: Mathematical Biology and Ecology
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Sara Jolliffe