TAPPred Prediction of TAP-Binding Peptides in Antigens

The transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) plays a crucial role in the transport of the peptide fragments of the proteolysed antigenic or self-altered proteins to the endoplasmic reticulum where the association between these peptides and the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules takes place. Therefore, prediction of TAP-binding peptides is highly helpful in identifying the MHC class I-restricted T-cell epitopes and hence in the subunit vaccine designing. In this chapter, we describe a support vector machine (SVM)-based method TAPPred that allows users to predict TAP-binding affinity of peptides over web. The server allows user to predict TAP binders using a simple SVM model or cascade SVM model. The server also allows user to customize the display/output. It is freely available for academicians and noncommercial organization at the address http://www.imtech.res.in/raghava/tappred.