Comparative immunopeptidomics of humans and their pathogens

Major histocompatibility complex class I molecules present peptides of 8-10 residues to CD8+ T cells. We used 19 predicted proteomes to determine the influence of CD8+ T cell immune surveillance on protein evolution in humans and microbial pathogens by predicting immunopeptidomes, i.e., sets of class I binding peptides present in proteomes. We find that class I peptide binding specificities (i) have had little, if any, influence on the evolution of immunopeptidomes and (ii) do not take advantage of biases in amino acid distribution in proteins other than the concentration of hydrophobic residues in NH(2)-terminal leader sequences.