AntigenDB: an immunoinformatics database of pathogen antigens

Hifzur R. Ansari, Darren R Flower, G.P.S. Raghava

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The continuing threat of infectious disease and future pandemics, coupled to the continuous increase of drug-resistant pathogens, makes the discovery of new and better vaccines imperative. For effective vaccine development, antigen discovery and validation is a prerequisite. The compilation of information concerning pathogens, virulence factors and antigenic epitopes has resulted in many useful databases. However, most such immunological databases focus almost exclusively on antigens where epitopes are known and ignore those for which epitope information was unavailable. We have compiled more than 500 antigens into the AntigenDB database, making use of the literature and other immunological resources. These antigens come from 44 important pathogenic species. In AntigenDB, a database entry contains information regarding the sequence, structure, origin, etc. of an antigen with additional information such as B and T-cell epitopes, MHC binding, function, gene-expression and post translational modifications, where available. AntigenDB also provides links to major internal and external databases. We shall update AntigenDB on a rolling basis, regularly adding antigens from other organisms and extra data analysis tools. AntigenDB is available freely at http://www.imtech.res.in/raghava/antigendb and its mirror site http://www.bic.uams.edu/raghava/antigendb.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbergkp830
Pages (from-to)D847-D853
Number of pages7
JournalNucleic Acids Research
Volume38
Issue numberSuppl.1
Early online date9 Oct 2009
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9 Jan 2010

Bibliographical note

© The Author(s) 2009. Published by Oxford University Press.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Keywords

  • antigens
  • communicable diseases
  • computational biology
  • genetic databases
  • protein databases
  • epitopes
  • humans
  • immune system
  • immunogenetics
  • information storage and retrieval
  • internet
  • lymphocytes
  • peptide mapping
  • post-translational protein processing
  • tertiary protein structure
  • software

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