[Development of rules for vaccine engineering based on the variability of peptide fragments in closely related...

Based on the protein sequence data bank (PIR), the "variable fragment" bank, comprising pairs of closely related proteins, containing one or more strongly differing sites of primary structures was formed. The bank includes 465 "variable fragments" of 383 protein pairs. Amino acid residues composition of "variable fragments" was examined and indexes of potential amino acid residues variability was formed. An analysis of amino acid fragments replaceability was carried out by substituting the N-, C-terminal, or middle part of a chain), the fragments length differences and physico-chemical properties of residues, such as volume, hydrophobicity, polarity, isoelectric point, etc. Some general empirical rules of peptide insertions in carrier-proteins were created based on these analyses. The rules are directed for performing modifications maintaining the common structure and function of the carrier-protein molecule. The selection scheme for determining the regions suitable for modification and the criteria for defining the width of acceptable modifications in this regions were suggested. The use of potential variability profile for detecting regions suitable for peptide insertion was considered on the model of hepatitis B surface protein.