Unraveling the glycosylated immunopeptidome with HLA-Glyco

Abstract

Recent interest in targeted therapies has been sparked by the study of MHC-associated peptides (MAPs) that undergo post-translational modifications (PTMs), particularly glycosylation. In this study, we introduce a fast computational workflow that merges the MSFragger-Glyco search algorithm with a false discovery rate control for glycopeptide analysis from mass spectrometry-based immunopeptidome data. By analyzing eight large-scale publicly available studies, we find that glycosylated MAPs are predominantly presented by MHC class II. Here, we present HLA-Glyco, a comprehensive resource containing over 3,400 human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class II N-glycopeptides from 1,049 distinct protein glycosylation sites. This resource provides valuable insights, including high levels of truncated glycans, conserved HLA-binding cores, and differences in glycosylation positional specificity between HLA allele groups. We integrate the workflow within the FragPipe computational platform and provide HLA-Glyco as a free web resource. Overall, our work provides a valuable tool and resource to aid the nascent field of glyco-immunopeptidomics.