Epitopia: a web-server for predicting B-cell epitopes.
BACKGROUND
Detecting candidate B-cell epitopes in a protein is a basic and fundamental step in many immunological applications. Due to the impracticality of experimental approaches to systematically scan the entire protein, a computational tool that predicts the most probable epitope regions is desirable.


RESULTS
The Epitopia server is a web-based tool that aims to predict immunogenic regions in either a protein three-dimensional structure or a linear sequence. Epitopia implements a machine-learning algorithm that was trained to discern antigenic features within a given protein. The Epitopia algorithm has been compared to other available epitope prediction tools and was found to have higher predictive power. A special emphasis was put on the development of a user-friendly graphical interface for displaying the results.


CONCLUSIONS
Epitopia is a user-friendly web-server that predicts immunogenic regions for both a protein structure and a protein sequence. Its accuracy and functionality make it a highly useful tool. Epitopia is available at http://epitopia.tau.ac.il and includes extensive explanations and example predictions.
Rubinstein
Nimrod D
ND
Department of Cell Research and Immunology, George S Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel. rubi@post.tau.ac.il
Mayrose
Itay
I
Martz
Eric
E
Pupko
Tal
T
D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D018985:Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte / Q000737:chemistry*; D020407:Internet; D012984:Software
D018985:Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte