Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published online on October 9, 2009
Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkp830
Database Issue |
AntigenDB: an immunoinformatics database of pathogen antigens
1Bioinformatics Centre, Institute of Microbial Technology, Sector 39A, Chandigarh, India and 2The Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, High Street, Compton, Berkshire, RG20 7NN, UK
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +91 172 2690557; Fax: +91 172 2690585; Email: raghava{at}imtech.res.in
Received July 28, 2009. Revised September 16, 2009. Accepted September 19, 2009.
The continuing threat of infectious disease and future pandemics, coupled to the continuous increase of drug-resistant pathogens, makes the discovery of new and better vaccines imperative. For effective vaccine development, antigen discovery and validation is a prerequisite. The compilation of information concerning pathogens, virulence factors and antigenic epitopes has resulted in many useful databases. However, most such immunological databases focus almost exclusively on antigens where epitopes are known and ignore those for which epitope information was unavailable. We have compiled more than 500 antigens into the AntigenDB database, making use of the literature and other immunological resources. These antigens come from 44 important pathogenic species. In AntigenDB, a database entry contains information regarding the sequence, structure, origin, etc. of an antigen with additional information such as B and T-cell epitopes, MHC binding, function, gene-expression and post translational modifications, where available. AntigenDB also provides links to major internal and external databases. We shall update AntigenDB on a rolling basis, regularly adding antigens from other organisms and extra data analysis tools. AntigenDB is available freely at http://www.imtech.res.in/raghava/antigendb and its mirror site http://www.bic.uams.edu/raghava/antigendb.