Epitopia: A web-server for predicting B-cell epitopes

Abstract

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. Conclusion: 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. © 2009 Rubinstein et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.