Mimotope

A mimotope is a macromolecule, often a peptide, which mimics the structure of an epitope. Because of this property it causes an antibody response similar to the one elicited by the epitope. An antibody for a given epitope antigen will recognize a mimotope which mimics that epitope. Mimotopes are commonly obtained from phage display libraries through biopanning. Vaccines utilizing mimotopes are being developed.

When term mimotope was first coined by Mario Geysen in 1986 ^[1] , it was used to describe peptides mimicking epitope. However, this concept has been extended to refer peptide mimic of all types of binding sites. As the mimic of binding site, mimotope analysis has been widely used in mapping epitopes ^[2] , identifying drug target and inferring protein interaction networks ^{[3] [4]} . Furthermore, mimotope has also shown its potential in the development of new diagnostics ^[5] , therapeutics ^[6] and vaccines ^[7]. In addition, special affinities mediated by mimotopes to various semiconductors and other materials have shown very encouraging promise in new material and new energy studies ^[8]. Gathering information on mimotopes into a special database therefore deserves. In 2010, the MimoDB database version 1.0 was released ^[9]. It had 10716 peptides grouped into 1229 sets. These peptides were extracted from biopanning results of phage-displayed random peptide libraries reported in 571 papers. The MimoDB database has been updated to the current version 2.0 very recently.^[10]. In version 2.0, it has 15633 peptides collected from 849 papers and grouped into 1818 sets. Besides the core data on panning experiments and their results, broad background information on target, template, library and structure is included. An accompanied benchmark has also been compiled for bioinformaticians to develop and evaluate their new models, algorithms and programs. In addition, the MimoDB database provides tools for simple and advanced searches, structure visualization, BLAST and alignment view on the fly. The experimental biologists can easily use the database as a virtual control to exclude possible target-unrelated peptides. The MimoDB database ^[11] is freely available.

References

1. ^ Geysen, HM; Rodda, SJ, Mason, TJ (1986 Jul). "A priori delineation of a peptide which mimics a discontinuous antigenic determinant.". Molecular immunology 23 (7): 709–15. PMID 2432410. 
2. ^ Smith, GP; Petrenko, VA (1997 Apr 1). "Phage Display.". Chemical reviews 97 (2): 391–410. PMID 11848876. 
3. ^ Tong, AH; Drees, B, Nardelli, G, Bader, GD, Brannetti, B, Castagnoli, L, Evangelista, M, Ferracuti, S, Nelson, B, Paoluzi, S, Quondam, M, Zucconi, A, Hogue, CW, Fields, S, Boone, C, Cesareni, G (2002 Jan 11). "A combined experimental and computational strategy to define protein interaction networks for peptide recognition modules.". Science (New York, N.Y.) 295 (5553): 321–4. PMID 11743162. 
4. ^ Thom, G; Cockroft, AC, Buchanan, AG, Candotti, CJ, Cohen, ES, Lowne, D, Monk, P, Shorrock-Hart, CP, Jermutus, L, Minter, RR (2006 May 16). "Probing a protein-protein interaction by in vitro evolution.". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103 (20): 7619–24. PMID 16684878. 
5. ^ Hsiung, PL; Hardy, J, Friedland, S, Soetikno, R, Du, CB, Wu, AP, Sahbaie, P, Crawford, JM, Lowe, AW, Contag, CH, Wang, TD (2008 Apr). "Detection of colonic dysplasia in vivo using a targeted heptapeptide and confocal microendoscopy.". Nature medicine 14 (4): 454–8. PMID 18345013. 
6. ^ Macdougall, IC; Rossert, J, Casadevall, N, Stead, RB, Duliege, AM, Froissart, M, Eckardt, KU (2009 Nov 5). "A peptide-based erythropoietin-receptor agonist for pure red-cell aplasia.". The New England journal of medicine 361 (19): 1848–55. PMID 19890127. 
7. ^ Knittelfelder, R; Riemer, AB, Jensen-Jarolim, E (2009 Apr). "Mimotope vaccination--from allergy to cancer.". Expert opinion on biological therapy 9 (4): 493–506. PMID 19344285. 
8. ^ Lee, YJ; Yi, H, Kim, WJ, Kang, K, Yun, DS, Strano, MS, Ceder, G, Belcher, AM (2009 May 22). "Fabricating genetically engineered high-power lithium-ion batteries using multiple virus genes.". Science (New York, N.Y.) 324 (5930): 1051–5. PMID 19342549. 
9. ^ Ru, B; Huang, J, Dai, P, Li, S, Xia, Z, Ding, H, Lin, H, Guo, F, Wang, X (2010 Nov 15). "MimoDB: a new repository for mimotope data derived from phage display technology.". Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) 15 (11): 8279–88. PMID 21079566. 
10. ^ Huang, J; Ru, B, Zhu, P, Nie, F, Yang, J, Wang, X, Dai, P, Lin, H, Guo, FB, Rao, N (2011 Nov 3). "MimoDB 2.0: a mimotope database and beyond.". Nucleic acids research. PMID 22053087. 
11. ^ "The MimoDB database". http://immunet.cn/mimodb.