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Updated: Jan 14, 2026
A Comparative Approach to Characterize the Landscape of Host-Pathogen Protein-Protein Interactions
Published on: July 18, 2013
mimicDetector: a pipeline for protein motif mimicry detection in host-pathogen interactions
Kaylee D Rich1, James D Wasmuth1
1Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, T2N 4Z6, Canada.
Motivation:
Molecular mimicry is used by pathogens to evade the host immune system and manipulate other host cellular processes. It is often mediated by short motifs in non-homologous proteins, whose detection challenges the sensitivity and specificity of existing bioinformatics tools.
Results:
We present mimicDetector, a k-mer-based pipeline for identifying protein-level molecular mimicry between pathogens and their hosts. Applied to 17 globally important pathogens, mimicDetector identified a broad and biologically plausible set of mimicry candidates, including helminth proteins mimicking components of the human complement system and a Leishmania infantum mimic of Reticulon-4, a regulator of immune cell recruitment.
Availability And Implementation:
mimicDetector is freely available at https://github.com/kayleerich/mimicDetector/, implemented in Python and Snakemake, and compatible with Unix-based systems.
