title: Parasitism as the main factor shaping peptide vocabularies in current organisms.
abstract: Self/non-self-discrimination by vertebrate immune systems is based on the recognition of the presence of peptides in proteins of a parasite that are not contained in the proteins of a host. Therefore, a reduction of the number of 'words' in its own peptide vocabulary could be an efficient evolutionary strategy of parasites for escaping recognition. Here, we compared peptide vocabularies of 30 endoparasitic and 17 free-living unicellular organisms and also eight multicellular parasitic and 16 multicellular free-living organisms. We found that both unicellular and multicellular parasites used a significantly lower number of different pentapeptides than free-living controls. Impoverished pentapeptide vocabularies in parasites were observed across all five clades that contain both the parasitic and free-living species. The effect of parasitism on a number of peptides used in an organism's proteins is larger than effects of all other studied factors, including the size of a proteome, the number of encoded proteins, etc. This decrease of pentapeptide diversity was partly compensated for by an increased number of hexapeptides. Our results support the hypothesis of parasitism-associated reduction of peptide vocabulary and suggest that T-cell receptors mostly recognize the five amino acids-long part of peptides that are presented in the groove of major histocompatibility complex molecules.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Science,Department of Philosophy and History of Science,Charles University in Prague,Viničná 7,Prague,CZ-12844,Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Michaela
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8606-6729
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zemková
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences,Department of Forest Management,Czech University of Life Sciences Prague,Kamýcká 1176,Prague,CZ-165 21,Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zahradník
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Science,Department of Philosophy and History of Science,Charles University in Prague,Viničná 7,Prague,CZ-12844,Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mokrejš
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Science,Department of Philosophy and History of Science,Charles University in Prague,Viničná 7,Prague,CZ-12844,Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Jaroslav
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Flegr
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D015801:Helminth Proteins / Q000032:analysis*; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions; D010455:Peptides / Q000032:analysis*; D020543:Proteome; D015800:Protozoan Proteins / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D015801:Helminth Proteins; D010455:Peptides; D020543:Proteome; D015800:Protozoan Proteins
keywords: MHC-based recognition; Peptide vocabulary usage; antigenic presentation; immune evasion strategy; immunity; proteomics