Morbid Sequences Suggest Molecular Mimicry between Microbial Peptides and Self-Antigens: A Possibility of Inciting Autoimmunity.

ABSTRACT: Understanding etiology of autoimmune diseases has been a great challenge for designing drugs and vaccines. The pathophysiology of many autoimmune diseases may be attributed to molecular mimicry provoked by microbes. Molecular mimicry hypothesizes that a sequence homology between foreign and self-peptides leads to cross-activation of autoreactive T cells. Different microbial proteins are implicated in various autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, human type 1 diabetes, primary biliary cirrhosis and rheumatoid arthritis. It may be imperative to identify the microbial epitopes that initiate the activation of autoreactive T cells. Consequently, in the present study, we employed immunoinformatics tools to delineate homologous antigenic regions between microbes and human proteins at

SUBMITTER: Pahari S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5640720 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature