The sequences of the proteins with unknown immunogenic potential
(UP) and the sequences of known vaccine targets (KP) were
analyzed using bioinformatics tools to determine their cellular
localization, to identify the presence of a signal peptide and to predict
their transmembrane helixes.
The Psort II (http://psort.hgc.jp/form2.html) program was used
to predict the cellular localization of the proteins in the parasite. To
predict the signal peptides, the Signal PServer 3.0 (http://
www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/SignalP) program was used, which also
predicts putative cleavage sites in the signal peptides of the sequences
analyzed.
Three different programs: TMpred (http://www.ch.embnet.org/
software/TMPRED_form.html), SOSUI 1.11 (http://bp.nuap.nagoyau.
ac.jp/sosui/sosui_submit.html), and TMHMM 2.0 (http://
www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/TMHMM), were used to predict the
transmembrane helices and exposed regions of the proteins. Based
on the previous analyses, the signal peptide sequences of the
proteins were removed prior to analysis of the proteins with the
transmembrane helix prediction programs. The results generated
by these prediction programs were then compared to select the
common exposed regions. In the case of membrane proteins, only
regions for which the results of all three programs were in
agreement were used to select the epitopes.