Influence of the conformation of a macromolecule on the generation of T-cell proliferative response. A study with
E Lacassie1, A Delmas, Y Trudelle
1Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire, CNRS, Orléans, France.
FEBS Letters
|August 8, 1994
Abstract:
To study the influence of the conformation of polypeptidic macromolecules on the generation of T-cell epitopes, sequential polypeptides with an octamer repeat unit were designed and synthesized. They adopt mainly unordered and alpha-helical conformations. Among these polypeptides, those containing proline are fully or partly unordered, and are more effective at inducing T-cell proliferation than a proline-free very stable alpha-helical polypeptide. This extremely stable alpha-helical conformation, probably stabilized by aggregation, would enhance its stability against proteolytic processing.
