The construction of the three-dimensional structures of the
fourteen selected epitopes bound to modified galactose (by the
addition of heteroatom cyclic) moieties was performed using
comparative modeling, which is a technique that is used to
construct three-dimensional protein structures based on two
structurally similar proteins that have an evolutionary relationship
(Dalton and Jackson, 2010 and Silva Júnior et al., 2012). The Basic
Local Alignment Search Tool (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST)
and the Protein Data Bank ((PDB) http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/home/
home.do) were used to obtain a native protein with a resolved
three-dimensional structure that was used as template for the construction
of the epitopes (Szabadka and Grolmusz, 2007 and Shahlaei
et al., 2011). The SWISS-MODEL program was used to construct
the three-dimensional structures of the epitopes using a structural
alignment between the target sequence and the region of similarity
of the protein template, taking into account the conformational
aspects of the target protein (Bordoli et al., 2009).