Figure 1.
Influence of HIV diversity on CD8+ T cell epitope recognition frequencies.
Epitopes recognized by a Kenyan cohort (n = 61) are shown, with the sequence of the most frequent optimal OLP sequences indicated and the optimal length epitope underlined a). Inverse relationship between OLP Elispot response frequency (x-axes) and the number of amino acid differences between BDE and ancestral/consensus clade A1 sequence (left panel) and clade A1 OLP library sequence (right panel) b). Positive selection was more commonly observed in new epitopes compared to BDEs c).
Table 1.
OLPs targeted in the current study (by ≥2 subjects) that are not found on the Best Defined Epitope (BDE) list.
Figure 2.
OLP-147 and 149 represent clade A1-specific epitopes.
These OLPs associate with HLA-B*57 expression (Table 2) and with the anchor residues that have been defined for the HLA-B*57 binding motif a). Alignments of the optimal epitope within OLP-149 demonstrate that in other clades, this epitope would not likely be presented by HLA-B*57 b).
Table 2.
Predicted epitopes based on the HLA-B7 supertype motif and the clade A1 OLP library sequence used for epitope mapping.
Figure 3.
Recognition of certain OLPs was associated with clinical progression status.
Three OLPs were associated with slower progression, and one with faster progression a). Recognition of OLP-060 and -169 in combination and implications for disease progression b).