›› 2012, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (7): 66-70.

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Research Advance in Epitope Identification Methods

WEN Xue-xia, CHEN Hua-lan, XIONG Yong-zhong, WANG Xiu-rong   

  1. Animal Influenza Laboratory of Ministry of Agriculture,National Key Laboratory of Veterinary Biotechnology, Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Harbin 150001, China
  • Revised:2012-01-10 Online:2012-07-20 Published:2012-07-16

Abstract: An epitope is the part of an antigen that is combined with lymphocyte surface receptors. Generally, it is composed of several amino acid residues or their spatial structure. It is the material basis of the immune response, and its nature decides the specificity of antigen. Epitope identification methods include peptides scanning techniques, amino acid mutagenesis techniques, X-ray or nuclear magnetic resonance, mass spectrometry, peptide phage display technology and bioinformatics prediction. The common approaches for epitopes study in recent years were reviewed in this paper.

Key words: epitope; identification methods; research advance

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